Lies the government told you by Andrew Napolitano (big screen ebook reader .TXT) 📕

in the end broken apart by the United States Supreme Court because it had allegedly “intended to monopolize.”

The same result occurred with U.S. v. American Can, a 1949 case where a judge found that the company had “coerced its customers into signing long-term leases.”27 As pointed out by D. T. Armentano, this so-called coercion was effected largely by attractive terms and generous price discounts for large orders. It was freely offered and freely bargained for. The company had violated antitrust laws because it gave bulk-order discounts! What is most egregious is that the judge ordered the company to raise its prices, reasoning that this would help the more expensive and less efficient companies compete in the market.28

Ayn Rand once aptly stated that “free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms.” The result of this deceptive contradiction of enforced free competition is illustrated most effectively in the case of the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa), which was charged with 150 violations of antitrust law and which the federal government pursued for over thirteen years in court, even though at the end of this terrible odyssey, the trial judge in 1939 dismissed all the charges. Unfortunately for Alcoa, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit essentially faulted Alcoa for being too successful, deeming that it was anticompetitive not because it attempted to drive out competitors through immoral tactics, but rather because it was too efficient and charged prices that were “too low.”29

Yet, if these are the “monopolies” that the government is protecting us from, the lowest-price monopolies, is the government even performing anything remotely beneficial to the public? Why is the government spending massive amounts of its time and our money prosecuting corporations for charging low prices? If we agree that low prices are good for consumers, the only reasoning behind the government’s actions stems from the settlements that are often the result of these antitrust suits. Corporations are paying out millions of dollars in fines for their purportedly harmful activities. And while prices go up for the consumer, at least the government has been able to make a quick buck, all in the guise of the “public interest” myth.

When people argue that the laws protect competition and efficiency, they should be reminded of these decisions. In essence, the antitrust laws are like pulling over drivers driving at the speed limit and staying within their lanes because careful conduct could be evidence that they are drunk drivers who are trying not to appear drunk, and when finding they are not guilty of being drunk, finding them too sober to drive.

Like traffic tickets for the state and local police, modern antitrust cases are just quick cash cows for the federal government. That is the modern law of antitrust: assuming guilt by status; fitting the circumstances to whatever crime may be needed; and using “crime” to fill government coffers.

The Presumption of Deception

We have merely touched upon the multitude of ways in which the government seizes our bodies, steals our property, and crushes our liberty with one side of its mouth, while proclaiming the presumption of innocence with the other. This presumption is the most fundamental jurisprudential value that “keeps the government off our backs,” to quote Justice Douglas. If the government can destroy this, however slowly, what will be next? What will remain of our freedom?

Lie #13

“The Constitution Applies in Good

Times and in Bad Times”

On April 16th 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a student at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia, came to school and killed thirty-two of his classmates with a gun before taking his own life. By January 2008, President George W. Bush had signed into law a measure that aimed to keep firearms from people with mental illnesses.1 The law provided up to $1.3 billion in federal grants to states, so that they could improve their tracking of mentally ill people who should not be permitted to purchase guns.2 A law like this was proposed in the mid-1990s, but the mental health lobbies argued that it stigmatized the mentally ill.3 After the tragedy at Virginia Tech, however, fear smothered freedom. Not one member of Congress voted against the law.4

When disastrous situations like the Virginia Tech shooting or 9/11 or Pearl Harbor occur, it is a tragedy for those affected. Yet, oftentimes the federal government utilizes the panic surrounding these situations to grab more power for itself. The government lies by telling us that it must infringe upon our rights in order to keep us safe. But if the steps taken by the government are truly necessary evils, why doesn’t the government tailor the scope of its power as narrowly as possible? Instead, the government enacts laws quickly amid the hysteria, thereby using people’s emotions and irrational fears to gag and blindfold them while their rights are swindled away. Many of these laws are then interpreted broadly as a mechanism for the government to seize more power, acquire more resources, and waste more taxpayer money.

Typically under these climates of hysteria an “anything goes” attitude prevails in Congress and, like patriotic lemmings, many politicians follow the leader and succumb to wishes of the political party to which they belong. Because they constrain their speech in an effort to be politically correct, justice is lost, and unconstitutional laws are passed.

Often the people don’t speak up either, because they, too, are afraid and tend to trust government to protect them in times of crisis. We are socialized not to rebel, not to question authority or to resist going along, because it is not polite to speak up, to state the obvious, to rein in government power. Those who object to government over-reaches are often put on the defensive and asked: What do you have to hide? Yet, we need to amend this thinking because in many of these hysteria-laden situations, we lose our rights and our identity as a free people. Thus, long after the crisis has settled, Americans still must endure the