Category Archives: Op-Eds

Op-Eds

Rittenhouse Verdict: Justice, But Not Joy

2 Comments
Blogtrepreneur, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo by Blogtrepreneur. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

On November 19, a Wisconsin jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse on various charges related to the shootings of three people (two fatally) during an August night of “unrest” (that is, a protest turned riot) in Kenosha.

I expected to see, and did see, a diverse set of reactions to the verdict on my (also diverse) social media feeds. The reactions broke down into three overall groupings.

Group 1: Rittenhouse was a hero who stood forth to protect private property and was entirely justified in shooting three evil-doers who assaulted him with intent to kill, or at least do grievous bodily harm, to him. His acquittal is an affirmation of truth, justice, and the American way.

Group 2:  Rittenhouse was a white supremacist slime-ball who showed up wanting to shoot people and ended up manufacturing reasons to do so. His acquittal is proof that truth and justice don’t matter, and that “the American way” is really just a tradition of legal privilege and protection for white right-wingers.

Group 3: Rittenhouse was a 17-year-old who made an unwise decision (as 17-year-olds will do) to show up to a riot, but who nonetheless had the right to act in self-defense when others made the even more unwise decision to violently assault him.

I’m in Group 3.

I didn’t and don’t know Kyle Rittenhouse’s full state of mind at any point in the incident. Presumably no one but Rittenhouse himself does.  But the available evidence indicates that he defended himself in the face of plausible threats of death or grievous bodily harm.

That’s not what a jury of 12 concluded in acquitting him. What the jury (and anyone who paid attention to the trial) concluded was that the prosecution didn’t prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. There’s a difference.

Group 4 (which includes all sensible members of the other three) says “I don’t like ANY of this.”

I hate that police shot Jacob Blake. That’s not a judgment of whether or not the police HAD to shoot him. Whether they had to or not, it wasn’t a good thing.

I hate that the protests over the shooting turned into a riot. The violence and destruction didn’t cause Jacob Blake to magically become un-shot nor did it make his shooting any more, or any less, justifiable.

I hate that a 17-year-old made the unwise decision to show up to a riot.  I’m glad he survived the experience, and hope he learned something from it, but all in all I’d rather have never heard his name.

I hate that grandstanding prosecutor Thomas Binger decided to interrupt the lives of Kyle Rittenhouse and 12 jurors, forcing them to sit through his incompetent delivery of an incredibly weak case.

The “not guilty” verdict seems just, but it really just makes the best of a terrible, and at multiple points avoidable, situation.

If there’s any good  takeaway from this incident at all, it’s the possibility that lives will be saved as future protesters pause for careful thought and consideration before attacking armed opponents who haven’t attacked them.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

When Giving Thanks, Don’t Forget Your Local Paper

1 Comment
Photo by Joanna Bourne. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Photo by Joanna Bourne. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I usually take a little time to think about who and what I’m thankful for and express my. That seems to be the point, after all. This year, for various reasons, my thoughts and appreciation turn toward journalists, newspapers, and other news media.

Sometimes the people and institutions we rely on to keep us informed get a bad rap, and sometimes they deserve it.

When the Washington Post and New York Times act more as stenographers for the political class than reporters of the facts, we all lose.

When trusted (by their particular partisan audiences, anyway) sources of information like Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow who pretend to seriousness but then answer  defamation suits with the “Alex Jones” defense — that they’re just entertainers whose statements are hyperbole and should never be relied on as factually  accurate — they embarrass an honorable and worthy profession. Even mere “opinion journalists” (like myself) should operate from a respect for fact and truth.

But the Post, the Times, Fox/Carlson, and MSNBC/Maddow aren’t the institutions and journalists I’m thinking of in expressing thanks.

I’m thinking — of course! — of whistle-blower journalists like Julian Assange and foreign correspondents like Danny Fenster, cooling their heels in cells for bringing us the truth. And of the many journalists killed, accidentally or purposely, “in the line of duty” while covering wars and investigating crimes.

More than that, though, I’m thinking of America’s local and community newspapers, the dailies and weeklies scattered across the country which continue to do the job of keeping us informed and bringing us together (or at least facilitating our arguments). And, of course, the fine people who write and edit those publications.

Yes, I’m biased: I got my start in “hard,” just the facts, ma’am journalism more than 40 years ago,  writing club notices for publication  in my hometown daily, the Lebanon, Missouri Daily Record. I moved on to my junior high, high school, and college papers, long before eventually finding my perch in opinion/advocacy journalism.

If you know how your local high school athletes are making out, or which local church is hosting an ice cream social, or which local hero had a birthday or went to the hospital, thank your local paper. If you know what your neighbors think about a pending bond issue or local scandal, thank that paper’s letters editor.

America’s local dailies and weeklies are supposedly dying. At the very least, many have moved entirely online or cut down the size and frequency of their print editions.

That’s sad. We need them, and we should appreciate them. They’re a key ingredient in the glue that holds us together, part of the mix that constitutes what Thomas Paine called “so celestial an article as freedom.” Discussing our problems may not solve them, but not discussing them certainly won’t. A free press is still largely where the productive substance of such discussions happens.

This Thanksgiving, please spare a moment of thanks (and perhaps a subscription check!) for your local newspaper of choice.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

How Markets are Like the Internet and Dinosaurs

1 Comment
Long Beach container port. Photo by Charles Csavossy. Public Domain.
Long Beach container port. Photo by Charles Csavossy. Public Domain.

“Slowly but surely,” Neal Freyman reports at Morning Brew, “the supply chain bottlenecks that have plagued the global economy for over a year appear to be easing — or at least have been circumvented.”

That’s good news for an American economy damaged by nearly nearly two years of shutdown, lockdown, and slowdown driven less by the COVID-19 pandemic itself than by the pandemic’s attendant,  politically encouraged mass hysteria and hygiene theater.

Not too long ago, the prospects for a  big Black Friday and Cyber Monday looked pretty bleak. Now, major retailers report recovering inventory levels while major auto-makers report a draw-down of the chip shortage that shut down assembly lines. Ships are once again getting unloaded, and shipping containers hauled to their destinations.

Lest politicians attempt to take credit for the apparent recovery, let’s be clear: Government did nothing but get in the way, and is doing its utmost to remain in the way. This hopeful recovery is driven by market actors, doing what market actors do.

John Gilmore, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, famously said that the Internet “interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” So far, despite the best efforts of politicians to bring it under their control, that remains true.

Market actors, likewise, interpret anything that disrupts their attempts to profit — by bringing products and services to paying customers — as damage and respond by finding ways around those obstacles.

When government outlaws something — heroin, for example — “black” markets spring up to provide it.

When government taxes something so heavily that it becomes unaffordable — cigarettes in New York City, for example — “gray” markets spring up to provide it sans  those taxes.

When government — California, for example — regulates something so ham-handedly that shipping containers stack up because all trucks operating in the state must be less than 10 years old and driven by corporate employees rather than owner-operators – market actors buy new trucks, increase their use of rail transport, and seek less restrictive port locations.

Even in central planning hell-scapes, markets spring up to at least partially make good on the damage government does. At the height of the Cold War, young people in the Soviet Union bought up American blue jeans as fast as they could be smuggled into the country. Even as their government starves them, North Koreans consume western media from smuggled flash drives.

As Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park, Dr. Ian Malcolm, puts it concerning supposedly non-reproducing dinosaurs, “life finds a way.” Markets are one of the best examples of that phenomenon.

If Joe Biden wants to claim any credit for the burgeoning economic recovery, he should encourage and strengthen that recovery by following the examples of predecessors like Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. That is, he should pursue deregulation and free trade instead of continuing down the damaging protectionist path blazed for him by Donald Trump.

Markets will find a way with or without the politicians’ cooperation, but standing aside means more prosperity, and faster, than trying to fight the inevitable.

Side note: Morning Brew, cited in this column, is a free daily email newsletter covering business/market developments … and I earn swag like mugs and t-shirts by referring subscribers. Click here to help put a new t-shirt on my back!

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY