Supremes to Juvenile Thugs: Don’t Pay No Mind, If You’re Under 18 You Won’t Be Doin’ Any Time
Via PrestoPundit, the U.S. Supreme “Court” has just ruled it unconstitutional to execute a vicious thug who planned in advance to burglarize a neighbor’s house, kidnap her, hogtie her, throw her over a bridge and brag to his friends about how he’d get away with it because he was under 18. According to 5 members of what passes for a Supreme “Court” (and one that many moonbats deride as a “conservative” one, to boot), it is unconstitutional to do anything that is popular in Iran, Pakistan, China or Saudi Arabia but is not popular in too many other places. Except, of course, having a death penalty itself, which is also popular in Iran, Pakistan, China and Saudi Arabia but not in the Western “democracies” from whom we once declared our now-defunct independence. “Justice” Kennedy non-explains his departure from American jurisprudence thusly:
It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty, resting in large part on the understanding that the instability and emotional imbalance of young people may often be a factor in the crime.
Earth to Kennedy: “acknowledge” all you want, but when it comes to issuing a ruling under the U.S. Constitution, it is proper that you acknowledge that the U.S. law is what it is, not what The Overwhelming Weight Of International Opinion (except maybe those opinions that are popular in Iran, Pakistan, China and Saudi Arabia, not to mention Iraq, Kuwait, the entire continents of Asia and Africa, or for that matter, the U.S. itself). The only international opinion that should matter in interpreting the Eighth Amendment is whatever international opinion may have influenced its passage in 1791. If “Justice” Kennedy can produce an example of a single country that, as early as 1791, considered it “cruel and unusual” to execute any juvenile offenders at all, I’d be impressed. Not impressed enough to agree with his decision, mind you, but impressed nonetheless.
I haven’t read this godawful court decision, so for now I have no opinion of it. I’m sure I will have something to say about it after I do. Meanwhile, if you’re interested in reading this judicially activist idiocy that I have no opinion about, along with a brilliant dissent by Justice Scalia that I also have no opinion about, here it is. Be forewarned, however, that it’s a PDF file and a clunker of an opinion.
Meanwhile, Hope Yen, the author of this article potentially earns a demerit or two of her own for this quarter-truth:
Kennedy noted most states don’t allow the execution of juvenile killers and those that do use the penalty infrequently.
Like I said, I don’t have any opinion about “Justice” Kennedy or his idiotic court decision, but as stupid as the direct Kennedy quotes from the opinion may be, I seriously doubt that he would have been stupid enough to write something as stupid as this paraphrase. Yes, as recently as yesterday, it was technically true that “most states” didn’t execute juvenile offenders, but only because 12 states don’t allow executions at all. Of the 38 states that do, the states were split exactly evenly: 19 yes, 19 no. Equally importantly, perhaps, the states that provided for 16 or 17 year olds to be executed are also generally the states that generally take the death penalty more seriously to begin with, e.g., Texas and Virginia, as opposed to, say, California, Illinois or New York, whose death penalties exist almost exclusively on paper. [UPDATE: Orin Kerr offers some real data to back this up.] So if the states were weighted according to actual executions, either by absolute numbers or on a per capita basis, it would be clear that a solid majority of the jurisdictions with serious death penalties also provided that juvelines can be executed when the situation warrants it (e.g., when a 17 year old plans a nasty murder in advance, in part because he thinks he’ll get away with it on account of his age).
Not that the prevalance or lack thereof is relevant to a law’s constitutionality anyway. Seeing as “Justice” Kennedy had the chutzpah to cite the five states that abolished juvenile executions by any means rather than limiting himself to the four that did so through the legitimate legislative process, perhaps he should write a follow-up opinion tomorrow stating that juvenile executions are double-dog unconstitutional now that every state has abolished them. It doesn’t make juvenile executions any crueler, but for what it’s worth, it does make them more unusual.
OK, I lied - I have read one brief excerpt of Justice Scalia’s dissent, which I find delightful (see Scalia, J., dissenting, p. 4-5). The only thing not-delightful about it is that it is a dissent, not a concurring opinion or, better still, a majority opinion. That, and the fact that it suggests that maybe “Justice” Kennedy really did make the asinine argument Hope Yen attributed to him above. Here’s a brief excerpt of the opinion that should have been signed by the majority:
In an attempt to keep afloat its implausible assertion of national consenus, the Court throws overboard a propositon well established in our Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. “It should be observed,” the Court says, “that the Stanford Court should have considered those States that had abandoned the death penalty altoghether as part of the consensus against the juvenile death penalty… a State’s decision to bar the death penalty altogether of necessity demonstrates a judgment that the death penalty is in appropriate for all offenders, including juveniles.” Ante, at 20. The insinuation of the Court’s new method of counting contradicts only “the Stanford Court” is misleading. None of our cases dealing with an alleged constitutional limitation on the death penalty has counted, as States supporting a consensus in favor of that limitation, States that have eliminated the death penalty entirely. [Cites omitted.] And with good reason. Consulting States that bar the death penalty concerning the necessity of making an exception to the penalty for offenders under 18 is rather like including old-order Amishmen in a consumer-preference poll on the electric car. Of course they don’t like it, but that sheds no light whatever on teh point at issue. That 12 States favor no execution says something about consensus against the death penalty, but nothing - absolutely nothing - about consensus that offenders under 18 deseve special immunity from such a penalty. In repealing the death penalty, those 12 States considered none of the factors that the Court puts forth as determinative of teh issue before us today - lower culpability of the yong, inherent recklessness, lack fo capacity for considered judgment, etc. What might be relevant, perhaps, is how many of those States permit 16- and 17-year-old offenders to be treated as adults with respect to non-capital offenses. (They all do; indeed, some even require that juveniles as young as 14 be tried as adults of theiy are charged with murder. [Footnotes deleted.]) The attempt by the Court to turn its remarkable minority consensus into a faux majority by counting Amishmen is an act of nomological desperation.
UPDATE: Powerline, Stephen Bainbridge, Karl Maher, Matt Barr, Ann Althouse, James Joyner, Ipse Dixit, Poliblogger, Steve Sturm, Bill Hennessy, Joshua Claybourn, Ben Pugh, Baldilocks, Polipundit and Beldar have more. Orin Kerr has less, though more is likely forthcoming. [UPDATE: Yup.] Mark Noonan, a capital punishment opponent at GOP bloggers, wonders aloud who it can be “cruel and unusual” to execute a 17 year old but not an 18 year old. Rob at Say Anything actually likes the decision, though he admits its stated reasoning is shaky. Robert Prather admits he should like today’s decision, but doesn’t.
UPDATE x2: On the flip side, Hugo Schwyzer, who is technically not Amish, neverthless proves Justice Scalia’s Amish analogy correct.
March 1st, 2005 at 1:23 pm
Thanks for the link! I’m on a crusade to impose some public accountability on the courts, so I hope you’ll visit often and drive up my traffic.
March 1st, 2005 at 1:29 pm
“Don’t Pay No Mind, If You’re Under 18 You Won’t Be Doin’ Any Time”
wouldn’t ‘not doing time’ be if they WERE executed?
March 1st, 2005 at 5:01 pm
Death penalty
Seeing the death penalty overturned today was good in a number of ways—the reading of the constitution that says the 8th amendment is malleable is plausible to me—but the 5th amendment is not. Already there are calls to overturn the…
March 1st, 2005 at 5:01 pm
Give it a year or two. Sooner or later they’ll figure out that the “overwhelming weight of international opinion” among nations they count as “international” is strongly opposed to the death penalty across the board, and to life without paroles for juveniles (and almost everyone else).
March 1st, 2005 at 5:02 pm
Death penalty
Seeing the death penalty overturned today was good in a number of ways—the reading of the constitution that says the 8th amendment is malleable is plausible to me—but the 5th amendment is not. Already there are calls to overturn the…
March 1st, 2005 at 5:33 pm
““overwhelming weight of international opinion” among nations they count as “international” is strongly opposed to the death penalty across the board”
You mean they’re going to ignore china and somalia again? Damn!
March 1st, 2005 at 5:40 pm
Whoa, let’s back off the legalese here for a second, and just consider this on a moral-rational basis. You’re essentially saying that you believe it’s somehow moral for the state to murder a minor in response to a crime committed by that minor, just like it does with adults. Which would be implying that a minor has the same decision-making capacity as an adult. Now, I don’t think some magical switch is flipped when you turn 18 such that you become a fully-functioning rational decision-maker, and I’m opposed to the death penalty across the board anyway, but even supposing I weren’t, I would think some sort of age minimum would almost be a no-brainer. To use the line of reasoning you cite above in reverse, if we can execute a 17-year-old, why not 16? And if 16, why not 15? And so on.
And here’s the thing I really, really don’t get about conservatives who support the death penalty: if it’s OK for the state to murder a human being with a conscious mind, then why is it not OK to terminate a fetus before it ever becomes conscious (by the way, I’m against abortion as well; I’m asking for the sake of argument)? Obviously, I realize that a fetus would be classified as “innocent,” while a convicted murder of any age would not. But “innocence” is certainly not a litmus test in other situations, such as war - in which, because there is no alternative, “innocent” civilians die regularly. In this case, however, there is an alternative: prison. And the last time I checked, that was no picnic. In my estimation, it’s far more of a punishment than death.
And then of course there are all the arguments about the chance of a mistake, blah blah blah, I’m sure you’ve heard them all before. What I really want to get at is, why do you think it should be legal (and moral) to execute a person who, by statute, nature, and culture, is neither a fully-developed rational decision-maker nor an independent legal entity for most other purposes?
March 1st, 2005 at 6:56 pm
The legal part is relatively easy, so I’ll dispense with it first. The Justices basically agree that the framers of the Eighth Amendment (or any subsequent amendment) did not intend to prohibit executions of anyone aged 16 or 17 (under 12 would be a different problem, but AFAIK no state legislature wants to do that anyway). From the standpoint of a judge, whose job it is to interpret the law rather than to make it, the inquiry should have ended there.
As to the moral issue, which the Missouri Legislature presumably did consider when passing a law that makes it hard for a 16 or 17 year old to get the death penalty and impossible for a 15 year old, I fail to see why anyone who committed an adult crime with an adult knowledge of what he was doing should get off with a child’s punishment. Mr. Simmons, like the thugs described in the amicus brief I linked to in the other post, clearly knew what they were doing, and were every bit as morally culpable for what they did as any similarly situated 18 year old would have been. So rather than give them a break based on a fiction of innocence, why not make the punishment fit the crime?
Indeed, the fact that we’re even talking about Simmons’s crime as a crime rather than an act of delinquency suggests that no one really believes the rhetoric underlying a ban on execution of juveniles. If they did, they’d have to advocate that no minor ever be tried as an adult for anything, and even a 17-year-old serial killer should eventually be freed with a clean record. Would you advocate that in Simmons’s case? If not, how do you square that with your statement that 17 year olds should be automatically and irrebuttably exempt from the death penalty (as opposed to arguing there should be no death penalty at all, which is a totally separate issue)?
I’m probably not the best one to argue capital punishment vs. abortion, as I lean “pro-death” on both. That said, I do have serious reservations about abortion, and none about capital punishment for first-degree murderers whose innocence is not in serious doubt. I think “innocent” vs. “guilty” makes a much better litmus test than “conscious” vs. “not conscious.” I don’t think it’s OK to kill innocent, unconscious kids or adults, but I do think it’s OK (and, in fact a moral imperative) to kill evil geniuses. The war analogy falls flat; any President who led us to war over something as trivial as the reasons for many (most?) abortions would rightly be impeached, and/or worse.
As to prison being more punishment than death, I just don’t buy it. At all. But it doesn’t really matter what you or I think, anyway. What matters is what the murderers or potential murderers think. They’re the ones who need to be deterred, not you or me, and almost to the man, they consider life without parole to be infinitely preferable to death. Case in point: after spending decades in prison for wantonly murdering a group of nursing students, Richard Speck bragged on video that [i]f they only knew how much fun I was having, they’d turn me loose.” Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber, gladly pleaded guilty in exchange for life without parole, for no reason otehr than to escape a probable death sentence. Countless others, like David Westerfield, have done or attempted to do the same (prosecutors turned down the deal in Westerfield’s case). Meanwhile, thousands of already convicted murderers, including Simmons himself, appeal their death sentences with full knowledge that the best result they can realistically hope for is to spend their rest of their lives in prison. Even Michael Ross, the rare bird who has thus far delayed his death sentence by claiming to want it, is reported to have admitted to friends that he’d rather be sentenced to life without parole if that were an option. On the flip side, I think you’d be hard pressed to name a single murderer who has ever appealed a prison sentence of any length asking the court to “reduce” it to death.
That said, if you really are sincere about the “death’s too good for ‘em” argument, and also agree that death is too harsh of a sentence for some other crimes (e.g., shoplifting) then perhaps you could tell me for which intermediate crimes death is “just right.”
March 1st, 2005 at 9:07 pm
Alright, let me first acknowledge that you’re a lawyer and I’m not, so I will readily concede to your expertise on the legal element.
As for this:
If not, how do you square that with your statement that 17 year olds should be automatically and irrebuttably exempt from the death penalty (as opposed to arguing there should be no death penalty at all, which is a totally separate issue)?
Well, I did say in my comment that I’m against the death penalty across the board, so I was just saying that, hypothetically, even if I were not, I would still be against executing minors. The reason I believe this is not that I think 18 is a magical number; rather, it is the generally accepted threshold for the minor/adult divide, and what I object to most strenuously is crossing that line for something as serious as the death penalty. In other words, if the generally accepted age of majority were 17, then that would be my lower limit, supposing that I supported the death penalty for anyone at all.
To me, it’s a lot like the statutory rape issue. Certainly, some people develop sexually younger than others, and so reach full physical maturity ahead of their peers. But does that mean we can make exceptions for those specific individuals? I would say no, because once the precedent is set, it will become part of the legal approach to trying statutory rape cases. Same with the death penalty. If one 17-year-old can be executed, then every prosecutor who tries a murder case involving a 17-year-old will have that in mind as an option. And once 17 or 16 becomes the new legal threshold for execution, it’s only a matter of time before a case comes up involving a 15-year-old, etc etc blah blah blah slippery slope… you know what I’m saying. So I guess the new question is, do you not believe that would happen? If not, why?
As for your question about “death’s too good for ‘em” and intermediate crimes, that’s a really good point. I suppose the obvious choice would be child molestation, but they’re the ones who suffer the most in prison, and the manner of that suffering definitely makes the punishment fit the crime. That said, I would have a very hard time arguing aginst the execution of a child molestor (again assuming that I accepted any). Beyond that, the only one I can think of that would fall within the space between “death’s too good for ‘em” and “death’s too harsh a sentence” would be treason. That one’s pretty tough to argue with, though I do think it should only applied in fairly eggregious circumstances - and definitely not according to the “Hindrocket” school of thought.
Last thing: on the question of whether convicted murderers prefer death or life in prison, I don’t really think that’s the point. Anyone with a function self-preservation instinct, given a binary “dead or live” choice, will of course choose “alive.” But that doesn’t mean their lives aren’t miserable. Yes, there are always looney tunes like the ones you point out, but I don’t think they’re representative of the general convicted murderer population.
What does strike me as more relevant in terms of deterrence is that, from what I’ve read, the death penalty doesn’t seem to have a deterrent effect. This site obviously has an agenda, but the statistics seem to suggest that there’s either no or possibly even a negative correlation between presence of the death penalty and reduction in murder rates. I don’t have time right now to go through all the reports (I’m on the east coast), but in any case that’s not the first source from which I’ve heard that conclusion.
March 1st, 2005 at 9:08 pm
“concede to”??? Man, I must be tired…
March 1st, 2005 at 10:07 pm
I am aware of those “studies,” but I’m also aware of others purporting to show that each execution saves as many as 18 lives. The studies are not necessarily inconsistent, as there are so few executions every year that 18 times that number would hardly make a statistical dent. Then again, if you or a family member were one of those 18, it would make a huge difference to you, I daresay just as huge as the more far-fetched possibility that the one wrongly convicted and executed non-murderer happened to be you or that family member. I have yet to hear of any “death penalty is no deterrent” study that came out of any organization that didn’t oppose the death penalty on other grounds. Barring definitive scientific proof either way, I stick with common sense economics: raise the price of doing anything, and somebody - maybe not very many people, but nevertheless, somebody - will stop doing it.
As to the magic number argument, I’m not sure I understand where you are going with it. Does it apply only to the death penalty, or to criminal liability generally? Do you object to juveniles ever being tried as adults? If so, you’re arguing in effect that Simmons should walk. If not, why should the rule for the death penalty be any different?
Either way, an interesting discussion.
March 2nd, 2005 at 4:45 am
The Case For The Juvenile Death Penalty
People under the legal age of 18 should be executed for their crimes. A lot of people think that kids under 18 should not face the death penalty. I beg to differ. People get the death penalty for premeditated murder….
March 2nd, 2005 at 6:54 am
Roper v. Simmons and the Evolving Standards of Decency:
In its decision yesterday declaring the juvenile death penalty unconstitutional, Roper v. Simmons, the Supreme Court relied heavily on the fact that since
March 2nd, 2005 at 9:42 am
Does it apply only to the death penalty, or to criminal liability generally? Do you object to juveniles ever being tried as adults?
Well, I was in fact thinking of it only in the context of the death penalty, but you’re right, that’s too narrow for legal or even moral purposes. If you were to put me on the spot and say “should a juvenile ever be tried as an adult?” and I had to come up with an immediate answer, then it would be no, based on the reasoning I outlined above. Not because I believe that I as an individual can determine some specific age below which one is a juvenile and above which one is an adult, but because I believe that treating a person considered by society to be “a juvenile” in the abstract as though he were “an adult” in the abstract is a can of worms, a slippery slope, a Pandora’s box, choose your analogy.
The point at which this transition occurs is irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion (though not irrelevant in the broad sense of jurisprudence or morality, of course). What I’m talking about could even be further simplified to two basic human conditions or states of “adult” and “not-adult”. “Adult” carries the connotation of an individual who is fully capable of making independent decisions about his own actions and the consequences thereof. Therefore, “not-adult” carries the connotation of an individual without that capability, or at least an individual whose decision-making / consequence-judging capability is not sufficiently developed to make him a completely independent individual.
So, if we regard the actions of a “not-adult” as though they were the actions of an “adult,” then I believe we are behaving irrationally - in the abstract - and immorally. I realize this is a vast oversimplification, because it’s really not a matter of a binary “adult” / “non-adult” state-pair; it’s a continuum from childhood to adulthood. Yet, we know that at different points along the scale, individuals are not capable of making rational decisions about personal behavior choices. The best analogy for this model that I can come up with is one from my own primary area of interest: languages, and more specifically, differentiating between a dialect and a separate language.
The relevant dichotomy in this case is between mutual comprehensibility and mutual incomprehensibility. German and Dutch, though related, are considered separate languages. Each, however, contains a number of dialects whose phonology makes them either more or less comprehensible to speakers of the “other language.” So, in some border regions, there are “dialects” of German and Dutch which are mutually comprehensible, but which are mutually incomprehensible with the mainstream version of the other language. So, northern German may be understandable to speakers of southern Dutch, but not to people in Amsterdam.
The point of all this is just to explain how I see the “adult/juvenile” divide: it’s hard to define, no question about it, but it does exist somewhere, and we should not be pretending for legal purposes that juveniles are the same as adults. Just like we would not pretend for legal purposes that two separate languages are mutually comprehensible because there are dialects within each language with greater degrees of mutual comprehensibility. If I can’t understand you and you can’t understand me, then all the jurisprudence in the world won’t make us able to have a conversation. Now, if you want to argue about where the transition from incomprehensibility (i.e. “non-adulthood”) to comprehensibility (i.e. “adulthood”) occurs, then that’s an entirely different story. But to say that, in a broad sense, “a non-adult” should be treated as “an adult” in judging his capacity to make decisions is, in my view, approximately equivalent to saying that “a non-English speaker” should be treated as “an English speaker” in judging his capacity to proofread an English paper.
March 2nd, 2005 at 11:11 am
If you have a court to decide in each case what is or isn’t a language, then it’s not necessary to draw a bright line between German and Dutch. Instead, one can establish as a general principle that German and Dutch are separate languages, then carve out narrow exceptions for the few occasions when they are not (i.e., where it can be shown that everyone involved was from the border area).
Think of it this way. The world’s most mature 17 year old is not allowed to smoke, and the world’s most mature 20 year old is not allowed to drink, while an extremely immature 21 year old is allowed to engage in both activities all he wants. Why? Because society doesn’t have, or at least does not want to expend, the resources it would take to establish alcohol and tobacco courts competent to decide each potential purchaser’s level of maturity on a case-by-case basis. We do, however, have the resources to make such important determinations in criminal cases that affect only a small fraction of the population. So why not use them?
March 2nd, 2005 at 12:36 pm
We do, however, have the resources to make such important determinations in criminal cases that affect only a small fraction of the population. So why not use them?
Actually, in that case, the language analogy is still relevant: under those conditions, you would be asking judges, who generally don’t have training or expertise in linguistics, to evaluate the ability one person to understand another’s language. In a capital murder case involving a 17-year-old (or whatever age below the generally-accepted “adult” transition point) perpetrator, you’re asking a judge to evaluate an individual’s maturity level without having had training in psychology or neurology. If we came up with some reliable way (as reliable as, say, DNA testing) to determine that a person’s neurological age was above the limit, while his physical age was not, then I would view it differently. But in that case, I would not agree with the idea of sentencing a “non-adult” as an “adult” because of the nature of the crime; I would say that because the individual can be classified as neurologically adult, then of course his actions should be evaluated on that basis.
So to summarize: if an individual can reasonably be considered an adult, despite not having attained the age of majority, then I think sentencing that individual as an adult should be considered moral. However, I know of no truly reliable way to do so; it basically, as far as I know, comes down to the input of various experts, the judge’s receptiveness to their input, and possibly whether the judge got laid the previous night, or maybe whether he was suffering from mild stomach cramps during the competency hearing. Obviously that’s an exaggeration, but I think you understand my point: judging of maturity is a highly subjective undertaking, and both the judge and the experts bring their own personal biases to the court (I know, I know, that’s always true, but when the death penalty is involved, I’d rather err on the side of caution).
That last comment of yours was a good point, though. I had never thought about this from the perspective of judicial resource allocation, but I think it’s a useful way of considering this question. Anyway, I can definitely say that whatever anyone says about lawyers, you guys definitely don’t have an easy job.
March 2nd, 2005 at 1:51 pm
Oddly, the same crowd that in 2003 was screaming that international law was reason alone to go into Iraq to dismantle that thug regime object to it being applied at home. On Monday, the day before this decision, only one nation in the world officially sanctioned the killing of juvie offenders.
Today we are no longer a rogue regime, a pariah state, when it comes to killing kids.
-k
March 2nd, 2005 at 3:08 pm
I’m not sure what you mean by “neurological adult,” but regardless, I think the real question is whose imperfect system is less imperfect. Either we entrust the Legislature to draw a bright line somewhere (based on its ideas about when the “average” schmoe turns adult), or we entrust an individual trial court to make that determination (based on all the relevant evidence it can gather about the specific individual before it). Which of these imperfect systems do you trust to get it right more often?
Of course, it’s not entirely an either or. Of the 38 death penalty states, 19 had a minimum age of 18 prior to yesterday’s decision. That’s not a policy I necessarily agree with, but as long as it was the legislature’s decision (it wasn’t always, but that’s another issue) I do respect it as the Legislature’s prerogative. The other 19 only rarely executed juveniles in practice, presumably because most juvelines probably didn’t have the requisite state of mind to warrant it but a few did. Michael Simmons was definitely one of them, as was Lee Boyd Malvo.
I guess that to convince me that a flat-out ban on juvenile executions is a good thing (assuming it’s done by the legislature and not our hyperactive courts), what you’d need to do is either convince me that the death penalty is wrong in and of itself, or produce at least one example of a real live juvenile who was unjustly sentenced to death over the past few decades. By “unjustly,” I mean unjust on account fo his age, and not on account of some other factors which would be equally unjust in the case of an adult (e.g., the nature of the murder, insanity, doubts about factual guilt, etc.).
March 3rd, 2005 at 7:45 am
Mike C.:
The point here is that the SCOTUS has placed this entire decision beyond the reach of the voters of the U.S.
The voters of the U.S. need not consider this issue any more. It doesn’t matter how many voters support the death penalty or how many disapprove of it. It doesn’t matter what their opinions are. They have no say at all here.
March 11th, 2005 at 11:04 pm
A challenge to social conservatives who are upset by the Supreme Court ruling on executing minors
A lot of conservatives seem to be upset by the Supreme Court’s ruling that minors cannot be executed, and so it has me wondering about something. Most conservatives agree with Robert Locke’s diseased rant about libertarians when he makes this…