On two days in May fifty years ago, American police and National Guard troops fired their weapons into crowds of anti-Vietnam-War protesters, killing six American students at two American state universities.

On May 4, 1970 Ohio National Guard troops fatally wounded Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder at Kent State University.

On May 15, officers of the Jackson, Mississippi Police Department and the Mississippi Highway Patrol killed Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green at historically black Jackson State.

The Report of the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest appointed by Richard Nixon to investigate the incidents concluded that “the indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of [Kent State] students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable” and that “the 28-second barrage of lethal gunfire [at Jackson State] was completely unwarranted and unjustified.”

In laying the theory for the modern nation-state as a bulwark against civil disorder, Thomas Hobbes insisted that its subjects retained “the liberty to disobey” orders “not to resist those that assault” them.

Yet while the 1970s would bring reductions in state power, with the cessation of the Vietnam War and its associated draft, such a right was never conceded in principle; the Commission recommended that “possession or use of weapons on campus by students should be strongly condemned” with no exceptions for self-defense. What the Commission called “the confidence of white officers that if they fire weapons during a black campus disturbance they will face neither stern departmental discipline nor criminal prosecution or conviction” was borne out.

While the Commission noted the discontent of those in higher education who “seek a community of companions and scholars, but find an impersonal multiversity,” it recommended increasing the role of state funding, which would effectively shift the leverage of power further away from the participants. As David Friedman noted at the time, “the lack of student power which the New Left deplores is a direct result of the success of one of the pet schemes of the old left, heavily subsidized schooling.”

The events of half a century ago serve as a reminder, as Voltairine de Cleyre observed a full century ago, that “the basis of all political action is coercion; even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through.” Remembering our unvarnished history can revive such candor long before 2070.

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a contributing editor at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Kent State, Jackson State, and The State,” by Joel Schlosberg, River Cities’ Reader [Davenport, Iowa], 05/13/20
• “Kent State, Jackson State, and the State,” by Joel Schlosberg. Antiwar.com, 05/15/20
• “Kent State, Jackson State, and the State,” by Joel Schlosberg, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 05/19/20

One laudable side effect of the COVID-19 panic is a nationwide effort to promote “vote by mail” as a universal alternative to standing in line at polling places. One reason that effort is laudable is that it would likely decrease vote fraud.

Yes, I said “decrease.” And Republicans were saying the same thing until recently.

In 2017, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp mailed out nearly 400,00 voter address confirmation notices. Voters who didn’t respond within 30 days were declared “inactive” and risked being dropped from the rolls entirely if they didn’t become “active” again within four years.

In 2019, a conservative public interest law firm, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, sued on behalf of three plaintiffs to force that state’s election commission to purge from the rolls voters who had not, you guessed it, responded by mail to address inquiries delivered by mail.

To put it a different way, in both of those cases (and in others), and until just weeks ago, Republicans argued that  mail is not just a reliable, but an indispensable, way to ensure that voters are who they say they are and live where they say they live.

But now, all of a sudden, John Fund of National Review wants us to know that “Mail-In Ballots Are a Recipe for Confusion, Coercion, and Fraud … So, naturally, Democrats are pushing to have them sent to every voter — or ‘voter.'”

What changed? It’s simple. Republicans and Democrats both seem to believe that when more people vote, Democrats win. Are they right? Who knows? But by their fruit you will recognize their true belief:

Previous Republican claims that mail is a trustworthy and verifiable voter identification mechanism were made for the specific purpose of reducing the number of people (especially people of color) who are allowed to vote.

Current Democratic claims that mail is a trustworthy and verifiable voting mechanism are made for the specific purpose of making it easier for people who are allowed to vote to, um, VOTE.

It seems to me that Republicans had it right the first time. Sending something — whether it’s an address confirmation or an actual ballot — to a registered voter’s registered address is a much more reliable way of identifying that voter than just trusting whoever shows up at a polling place vaguely resembling a bad photo.

It’s the 21st century, folks. Let’s update our voting technology to at least the 19th.

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/CITATION HISTORY

On May 3, a group of around 60 mercenaries attempted an amphibious landing at Macuto, on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. They were quickly defeated and 13 of them — including two Americans, Airan Berry and Luke Denman — captured.

US president Donald Trump has denied any association with, knowledge of, or involvement in the affair on the part of the US government.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on the other hand has pledged to use “every tool” to get Berry and Denman released and returned to the US — a curious position for a US diplomat, given that the two seem to have been taken while violating Venezuelan law on Venezuelan soil.

The details behind the slapstick “invasion” remain somewhat murky, but a few aspects are reasonably well documented:

First, that the planners of the operation were Jordan Goudreau —  former US soldier and owner of “security” firm Silvercorp — and former Venezuelan general Cliver Alcala Cordones.

Second, that the services of Silvercorp were retained by a “Strategic Command” answering to Juan Guaido, a Venezuelan opposition figure recognized by his country’s National Assembly, and by 59 other regimes, as the country’s “acting president.”

Third, that the goal of the landing, dubbed “Operation Gideon” seems to have been to abduct the other claimant to the country’s presidency, Nicolas Maduro, overthrow his regime, and deliver him to US authorities for trial on recent “drug kingpin” charges.

At first glance, it’s easy to believe Trump’s denials of involvement. The whole operation was a comedy of errors from conception through execution. There was never any chance that 60 mercenaries were going to make a successful landing, move inland, capture Maduro, and spirit him out of the country, even with the help of another 300 troops supposedly already in Venezuela.

But even a cursory look at US history says this kind of thing happens all the time.

The US military messes up. Think Little Big Horn, the downing of Francis Gary Powers over the Soviet Union, or the “Desert One” fiasco during the Iran hostage crisis.

The US intelligence community overestimates its ability to extort presidents into following up failed paramilitary actions with official military force. Remember the Bay of Pigs? Maduro does.

American politicians get caught in weird, officially unsanctioned, criminal schemes. Consider, for example, Richard Nixon’s “Plumbers” and the Watergate burglary.

Yes, “Operation Gideon” looks, in retrospect, like a Monty Python sketch. But so do a lot of government, or government-sponsored, or government-approved, projects.

Is it coincidence that between the time Guaido contracted with Silvercorp and the launch of the operation, the US government provided “law enforcement” cover in the form of drug charges and a $15 million bounty on Maduro’s head?

If you and I landed at Lyme Regis with a plan to abduct Boris Johnson, or at Santos Beach intending to capture Jair Bolsonaro, would Mike Pompeo be keen to get us repatriated, or would he leave us to the mercies of the British or Brazilian justice systems?

Was “Operation Gideon” a comedic interlude, or just the latest failed US intervention in Venezuela?

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/CITATION HISTORY