Why Jason Brennan now justifies Violent Resistance to the Government

Jason Brennan asks-

If you see police choking someone to death – such as Eric Garner, the 43-year-old black horticulturalist wrestled down on the streets of New York City in 2014 – you might choose to pepper-spray them and flee. You might even save an innocent life. But what ethical considerations justify such dangerous heroics? (After all, the cops might arrest or kill you.) More important: do we have the right to defend ourselves and others from government injustice when government agents are following an unjust law?

The right to self-defence is unqualified save against an action sanctioned by law. An unjust law is no law at all because it has no focal salience. It is not the case that an unjust action of the sort described above gains legal sanction just because it is performed by government agents. Of course, all these matters are justiciable and juristic reason is notoriously defeasible. However, it is protocol bound and 'intensional' or 'buck stopped' in a certain sense which means that it is as much outside the scope of philosophy as questions about how to fix the plumbing.

Brennan, typically, thinks differently. What the Law, and the Law alone, can clarify, he believes Philosophy should shit all over.

I think the answer is yes. But that view needs defending. Under what circumstances might active self-defence, including possible violence, be justified, as opposed to the passive resistance of civil disobedience that Americans generally applaud?

In the Garner case, a passerby who happened to know that Garner was asthmatic and that Officer Pantaleo was killing him by applying an illegal choke hold would have been legally justified in using reasonable force- e.g. pepper spraying the officer- though, no doubt, that passerby might have an uphill battle proving it in Court.

Civil Disobedience is not germane in this context. There was no unjust law. There was an illegal action (the NYPD prohibits choke-holds) by a police officer. It is a different matter that the Grand Jury failed to indict the officer. Civil Disobedience might have a role in challenging unjust institutions administering the Law, but there was no unjust Law here for it to protest.

Once again, the Law has clarified all these matters. Philosophy has no role here. But Brennan, who has a worthless book to sell, insists otherwise. Why? Brennan believes that most people are stupid and have absurd beliefs.

Most people answer yes, believing that we are forbidden from stopping government agents who violate our rights.

Is Brennan utterly mad? Suppose a government agent knocks on Brennan's door and says, "I've come to rape your wife and sodomise your eye socket. Kindly sit down quietly while I violate your rights.' Would Brennan actually turn around and say to his wife, 'Gee honey, this sure is a tough break for us. I could just beat the shit out of this government agent, or shout out to our neighbors to do it for me, but here in America we are forbidden from stopping government agents who violate our rights. So just lie back and think of George Washington.'

I find this puzzling. On this view, my neighbours can eliminate our right of self-defence and our rights to defend others by granting someone an office or passing a bad law. On this view, our rights to life, liberty, due process and security of person can disappear by political fiat – or even when a cop has a bad day.

But this view is flat out crazy. It does not correspond to anything in American law or culture. It is a fantasy.

In When All Else Fails: The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice (2019), I argue instead that we may act defensively against government agents under the same conditions in which we may act defensively against civilians.

D'uh! That has always been the case. What's next for Brennan? Will his next book be titled 'When all Else Falls: the Ethics of the Aeroplane's defiance of Newton's unjust Law of Gravity.'

In my view, civilian and government agents are on a par, and we have identical rights of self-defence (and defence of others) against both.

This is not a view, it is the Law of the Land. What matters is that the right of self-defence is exercised according to a reasonable person test. This means that it is inherently legal, not philosophical, since a reasonable person would look to the Law, not Philosophy, for guidance.

We should presume, by default, that government agents have no special immunity against self-defence, unless we can discover good reason to think otherwise.

Nobody as any immunity at all with respect to right violation. It is not up to us to 'discover good reasons' of a philosophical kind because a reasonable person would focus only on reasons considered appropriate by the actual law of the land.

But it turns out that the leading arguments for special immunity are weak.

There are no such arguments.

Some people say we may not defend ourselves against government injustice because governments and their agents have ‘authority’.

Who are these people? Do they really let 'government agents' rape them without trying to defend themselves? I don't believe they exist.

(By definition, a government has authority over you if, and only if, it can oblige you to obey by fiat: you have to do what it says because it says so.)

No such authority has ever existed. If it had, it could, by fiat, oblige a person to stay alive for ten thousand years. We would love to give ourselves over to a benign authority which had such a magical property.

Authority has no intensional definition. It may have an extensional definition or a 'buck stopped', or otherwise protocol bound, definition for specific legal and administrative purposes.

Suppose a government can oblige its subjects to obey by fiat. Then it can decree that everybody is obliged to have the set of obligations ex post optimal for itself. Clearly, this is impossible because of Knightian Uncertainty. But, this also means no authority would want to be able to impose obligations by fiat because this would disable error correction in a manner fatal to its own longevity.

That is why there is no 'authority argument' anywhere in the world save in a cultic form. The thing is too stupid.

But the authority argument doesn’t work. It’s one thing to say that you have a duty to pay your taxes, show up for jury duty, or follow the speed limit. It is quite another to show that you are specifically bound to allow a government and its agents to use excessive violence and ignore your rights to due process. A central idea in liberalism is that whatever authority governments have is limited.

A central idea of any thing not an outright loonytoons cult is that authority is and must be limited. If it weren't pigs could and must fly and they'd shit over everything in the manner of Jason Brennan. Any authority which can sustain itself over time must have a more or less incentive compatible mechanism. But that means that rights are not cancelled by duties. Rather the rights holder is separate from the obligation holder. Otherwise both are meaningless and serve no error correction function.

This does not mean that a Liberal State can't do anything a Despotic State can. The folk theorem of repeated games explains why. Furthermore, Liberalism permits the Law to get things wrong without ceasing to be the Law. It entails only a commitment to focality, when it comes to natural law. Otherwise, it can always be considered positive or as a type of Economia.

Since there are 'open problems' in maths to do with whether Deontic logic can have 'univalent foundations', a Philosopher could have something to say in this context.

But Brennan is not a Philosopher. He is a cretin. He thinks philosophy is about inventing a straw-man who is even more cretinous and pretending to be all sweetness and light in comparison.

Consider the following-

Others say that we should resist government injustice, but only through peaceful methods.

We should complain about injustice by our public servants or institutions just as we complain about any tort or breach of contract we suffer in civil society. 'Resistance' is the wrong word here.  I am not 'resisting' Amazon when I demand a refund for a good which was not delivered. I am complaining.

We may speak of the French Resistance if that country is occupied by Nazi scum. Riots against Macron aren't 'Resistance'. They are hooliganism.

Indeed, we should, but that doesn’t differentiate between self-defence against civilians or government.

There is no such difference in Law. I am entitled to use force to stop a police man raping me in exactly the same way that I am entitled to defend myself from Jennifer Aniston who, for some reason, is delivering my pizza and pushes her way into my home and rips open my kimono and seeks to sate her vile lust upon my quivering body.

The common-law doctrine of self-defence is always governed by a necessity proviso: you may lie or use violence only if necessary, that is, only if peaceful actions are not as effective. But peaceful methods often fail to stop wrongdoing. Eric Garner peacefully complained: ‘I can’t breathe,’ until he drew his last breath.

Wow! Brennan thinks Garner was engaging in civil disobedience. This is not true. The  police officers were determined to manhandle him and  inflict pain and humiliation. They probably did not intend to kill him. Still, the choke-hold used was illegal.  There can be no civil disobedience if a crime is being committed. There is merely a failure, perhaps prudential, to use reasonable force to prevent the violation of one's rights.

Another argument is that we shouldn’t act as vigilantes.

Why not? There is no prohibition on vigilantism as such if no law is broken. It is a case of innocent till proven guilty.

But invoking this point here misunderstands the antivigilante principle, which says that when there exists a workable public system of justice, you should defer to public agents trying, in good faith, to administer justice.

There is no such principle. If there were, Public Interest Litigation would not be permissible. It is not the case that Sherlock Holmes 'should defer to public agents trying, in good faith,' to catch Dr. Moriarty.

So if cops attempt to stop a mugging, you shouldn’t insert yourself.

Unless, you are an SAS trained commando.

But if they ignore or can’t stop a mugging, you may intervene. If the police themselves are the muggers – as in unjust civil forfeiture – the antivigilante principle does not forbid you from defending yourself. It insists you defer to more competent government agents when they administer justice, not that you must let them commit injustice.

The test here is the 'reasonable man' one. There is no further 'anti-vigilante principle'.

Some people find my thesis too dangerous.

Fuck  off! Brenan's thesis is not dangerous. It is cretinous.

They claim that it’s hard to know exactly when self-defence is justified; that people make mistakes, resisting when they should not. Perhaps. But that’s true of self-defence against civilians, too. No one says we lack a right of self-defence against each other because applying the principle is hard. Rather, some moral principles are hard to apply.

This is a legal, not a moral, matter. Some jurisdictions have 'stand your ground' & 'Good Samaritan' type laws. Your personal morality might count towards determining intent which may affect the quantum of punishment but it has no bearing on your rights or obligations.

However, this objection gets the problem exactly backwards. In real life, people are too deferential and conformist in the face of government authority.

Where? Not down my neck of the woods around closing time on a Saturday night.

They are all-too-willing to electrocute experimental subjects, gas Jews or bomb civilians when ordered to, and reluctant to stand up to political injustice.

Nonsense! People are only willing to do stuff in return for money & social position.

If anything, the dangerous thesis – the thesis that most people will mistakenly misapply – is that we should defer to government agents when they seem to act unjustly. Remember, self-defence against the state is about stopping an immediate injustice, not fixing broken rules.

Very true! Yet, in America, millions of  people are being raped by 'Government agents' whom they feel they have a duty to obey. Brennan himself has just been reamed by the postman who is buttoning himself up and saying 'I order you to say nothing about this'. That is why, Brennan keeps writing these idiotic books. It is a cry for help.

Of course, strategic nonviolence is usually the most effective way to induce lasting social change.

Rubbish! Economic forces alone are effective in changing Society. Violence too is economic.

But we should not assume that strategic nonviolence of the sort that King practised always works alone. Two recent books – Charles Cobb Jr’s This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed (2014) and Akinyele Omowale Umoja’s We Will Shoot Back (2013) – show that the later ‘nonviolent’ phase of US civil rights activism succeeded (in so far as it has) only because, in earlier phases, black people armed themselves and shot back in self-defence.

But, it was economic forces- the tremendous talent, patriotism and productivity of African American people- which determined the outcome. No one would pay red-necks to shoot Black vets, or those they trained, who knew how to shoot back and who didn't require a pay check to do so.

Once murderous mobs and white police learned that black people would fight back, they turned to less violent forms of oppression, and black people in turn began using nonviolent tactics.

Sheer nonsense! The minority would have lost a race war. What changed was the amount of surplus their economic activities could generate. Murderous mobs actually have ring-leaders who get paid. The police won't get off their lard asses without gold plated pensions. That money has to come from somewhere. More and more of it was coming from African Americans and 'liberals' and...urm... those people Farrakhan hates so much.

Defensive subterfuge, deceit and violence are rarely first resorts, but that doesn’t mean they are never justified.

Rubbish! They are always first resorts unless preempted by an expensive mechanism which can only be dismantled by purely economic forces. Thus, it remains the case that you are justified in lying, cheating and using violence to prevent your rights being violated save if an expensive mechanism exists which will interpose itself in a manner a reasonable person would find preferable, if only for prudential reasons.

Justification is only required where no Hohfeldian immunity exists. We all have such immunities with respect to our philosophical beliefs. This does mean that, like Brennan, we can write any old shite. However, we don't all have his excuse- which is that he feels obliged to keep silent any time an 'agent of the government' sodomises him. If the poor fellow now thinks he is Malcolm X and dreams of a world where the people will rise up to overthrow the American Government, he is perfectly justified because of the incessant pounding his asshole is receiving from every passing Government employee.