14A014 Two Kinds of Killer by Jim Davies, 5/30/2014    

Last Monday was Memorial Day, and coincidentally news of the Isla Vista killings by Elliot Rodger broke that weekend. He was angry that all the pretty girls he asked said "no." Such rejection is one of the many burdens we menfolk have to bear, for I hear that even the most accomplished seducers say a 90% negative response is par for the course (though Julian Assange may have made serious inroads into that figure.) Rodger appeared to me good looking, and he was supported by a late-model black Beemer thanks to his affluent parents, so he might have expected a hit rate around that 10%; but evidently he didn't reach such dizzy heights and was sore about it. It appears to me that the sensible young ladies of California have built-in weirdo detectors.

Be that as it may, Rodger is being vilified. A leading journal put out a feminist view by Jessica Valenti that blamed "misogyny" - hatred of women. That seems odd; he hated only women who rejected his advances, and (by killing three of each sort) men, who had succeeded where he had failed. Facebook has pulled his web page, and it wouldn't surprise me if his English prep school erased his name from its roster of Old Boys. It would surprise me even less if the school removed from its web site this graphic of a cute little girl with red paint on her fingers.

So much for the sad case of a fellow on the edge of mental illness (which the local sheriff did not think dangerous) and in the coming Zero Government Society there may, alas, be comparable incidents. If crazy folk go wild with guns or knives, they are likely to get shot down, because everyone will be free to own and carry; therefore the victim count may well be lower. But I can't promise it will be zero; a ZGS isn't perfect. Just as close to perfect as is feasible.

Contrast, now, the honor afforded to the vast horde of killers employed by government, over the past two and a quarter centuries. A whole holiday is set aside every year. Bands play. Paraders parade. Flags wave. Pompous pols prognosticate. Traffic is held up. And the take-away is that those killed in the process of killing the government's enemies are heroes and that "their name liveth for evermore." Even that hoary old falsehood may be trotted out in Latin: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

So, those who kill for reasons of their own are properly blamed and reviled, but those who kill (in vastly greater numbers) on command of the State are honored and praised. Very obviously, there is a double standard in operation. Government makes it abundantly clear every Memorial Day that if you kill on its behalf and die in the process, you deserve praise above mere ordinary mortals - whether you volunteered, or were drafted.

A few of those parading did their killing in WW-II, and sadly recalled their fallen comrades. Some who did so were sickened by the memory of war. A few may even have wondered what was so bad about German, Italian or Japanese conscripts that they needed to kill them. A very good thing to wonder; what a pity the wondering didn't take place 70 years earlier.

Government kills: good. Individuals kill: bad. Such is government morality.

There will be one standard and one only in the coming ZGS: killing, except in defense of oneself or another, is morally wrong. Why? - because everyone has the right of self ownership, hence nobody has any right to remove it, in part or in total. That fundamental principle will be known by everyone, because the ZGS will not begin until everyone has learned it, in a Freedom School.

So: someone kills, (s)he will be asked by the victim's family for compensation; and if he refuses, a trial will be held and judgment rendered. The aggressor's response to that order will be on the public record; if he still refuses, nobody will trade with him; he will be an outcast. Ceteris paribus, he will starve to death or exist in isolation.

There being no government, there will be no more government wars, or government victims, or government killers. If Memorial Day is still celebrated, it will be to remember the vast toll of government killings, killed and killers alike, and to take pleasure in its termination.