Trump Deserves No Thanks for Pardoning Ross Ulbricht
UPCOMING EVENT: Wednesday, February 5 at noon. FFF is hosting a get-together in downtown Boston after the oral arguments in Ian Freeman’s appeal, where we will discuss the oral arguments. I will be there. Trillium Brewing Fort Point, 50 Thomson Pl, Boston, MA 02210; (857) 449-0083; https://trilliumbrewing.com. Reminder: The Court of Appeals is located at One Courthouse Way in Boston. The oral arguments are scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on the 7th floor of the courthouse. Trillium Brewing is about one block away. See here for more details.
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While there are libertarians praising and thanking President Trump for fulfilling his political promise to pardon Ross Ulbricht (or Ross Ulbright, as Trump referred to him), Trump actually deserves no praise or thanks whatsoever. That’s because federal officials never had any legitimate moral authority to arrest, prosecute, or incarcerate Ulbricht or, for that matter, anyone else for any drug-related crime whatsoever.
As libertarians have long maintained, what a person ingests is simply none of the government’s business. Thus, government officials have no more business jailing people for what they ingest than jailing people for what they read or where they choose to go to church.
Given such, why should anyone thank Trump or anyone else for releasing someone who should never have been incarcerated in the first place? This is especially true given that Trump left Ulbricht to rot in jail during the entire four years he was president the last time around, followed by another four years in prison under President Biden.
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After all, before he left office, President Biden pardoned or commuted the sentences of not just one drug-war prisoner, as Trump has done, but instead several hundreds. I didn’t see many libertarians praising and thanking him, nor should they have. That’s because those people shouldn’t have been in jail in the first place.
One of the big problems we face in American society, including among elements of the libertarian movement, is that all too many Americans have come to accept their lives as serfs or servants, with many of them even convincing themselves that they are living life as free individuals. They have been raised with that mindset, especially those who were indoctrinated in America’s public (i.e., government) schools. Thus, when their political masters appear kind and benevolent to them, they react with obsequiousness, subservience, and servility toward their masters. “Thank you, master, for being so kind and wonderful to me and my fellow citizens. We never appreciated freedom until we learned to serve you.”
Think of a slave owner on a 19th-century plantation. One day, out of the kindness of his heart, the slaveowner decides to free one of his 100 slaves. One can imagine other slaves exclaiming “Thank you, Massah. Thank you for freeing John. We are so grateful to you for your kindness and benevolence to us slaves.”
That’s the mindset of a slave. The mind
Article from The Future of Freedom Foundation
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