“THE WORLD IS A SAFER PLACE” remarked The New York Observer, when Paris Hilton was jailed in Los Angeles, California. However, the only people who actually felt safer were the police and bailiffs and judges of Los Angeles, who were reassured that there was no prospect of domestic tranquility – a.k.a. constitutional government – emerging in their metropolis.

This may seem to be just the obvious failure of our republican form of government: elected county and district attorneys eagerly look for crimes-without-victims which they can prosecute in order to cow, or sheep, the citizens. But this persistent phenomenon is due to an institutional anomaly; the prosecutions are brought by county, or district, grand juries and attorneys, but those convicted of felonies are confined in State prisons – at State expense. If the counties were required to pay the State to keep the convicts, then the voters might find it worth their while to elect prosecutors who would discriminate dutifully.

A government of law allows no special privileges – or only ones in favor of minorities, such as bankruptcy and patents and copyright. Why is it against the law to drive without a license – on a public highway? Simply so that the State can sell licenses; were it not illegal to drive without a license, no-one would pay for a license. The State is running a plain and simple protection racket. If there were a test to measure driving ability, it might well rank the drivers in order, from 1 to, say, 10,000,000. Can you say that those from 1 to 5,000,000 are the first class, and those from 5,000,001 to 10,000,000 are the second? No, because the difference between those numbered 5,000,000 and 5,000,001 is negligible, and if you made the order a second time, people would have moved up and down across the division; to say “all men are equal” is to say “there are no classes” (not “there is no order”!) Certainly Hertz and Avis and National Car Rental are free to issue licenses to drive their own cars; if they make mistakes, they lose either customers or rentals. But the state is not at liberty to make mistakes; it exists to do justice, “No State shall . . . grant any Title of Nobility . . .:” Art. I, Sec. 10.

In California, the purpose of the criminal prosecution is to “correct” the citizen; I find it hard to believe that a person created in the image of God is improved in any way by being fenced in and given food and water. What might well “correct” hir, or hem, would be to explain exactly what is the difference between right and wrong; but, of course, if the penal code actually defined that distinction, hardly anyone would ever be convicted (how often do you see anyone fail to yield “in compliance with” a YIELD sign?) and the police and bailiffs and judges would be reduced to earning an honest living – one which their equals agreed to give them.

Let me tell you a great big, GREAT BIG, secret – one very closely guarded by the police and bailiffs and judges! In any court, the plaintiff bears the burden of proof. In a criminal case, any presumptions are in favor of the defendant: you are presumed to be a reasonable actor, if you squeezed the trigger you are presumed to have meant to fire. (If you were actually drunk or drugged, you would have to find evidence to show the fact.) The secret is that in California, and indeed several of the States, “in every crime or public offense” the penal code explicitly requires “evil design,” what the lawyers call mens rea. If you fail to yield “in compliance with” a YIELD sign, you have committed a crime malum in se, “in itself unlawful;” you are presumed to have meant to wrong the other driver. who had the right of way. You would have to prove that your brakes failed, or some other fact, in order to have an excuse. But failing to stop “in obedience to” a STOP sign is malum prohibitum, wrong only in the jurisdiction of this legislature, only since the act was signed by the governor; it is necessary for the prosecution to prove that you meant to wrong someone else, you do not have to prove that your intention was innocent.

Obviously, these United States would not have the world’s safest highways if the citizens were inclined to violate the rights of their equals; the crimes the prosecutors try are almost always statutory crimes, crimes against the state. Paris Hilton has only to argue, “You have not proved that I meant to wrong any other citizen; your case is defective.” In California and several other States, it only needs the citizens to fight the cases, to demand that the prosecution prove “evil design,” for us to restore LIBERTY – which means that you act as you think right, anyone who thinks otherwise has to sue for damages. If your actions result in harm to one of your equals, se can sue for damages – in the civil court: the State does not get its sticky fingers on the money.