Mondays with Murray: Rothbard on the George Zimmerman Verdict

July 22, 2013 Jason Grimley

With even the Lions of Liberty sucked into commenting on the hoopla surrounding the George Zimmerman verdict, one has to wonder what Murray Rothbard would have to say about the case. One would think that Rothbard would have viewed it through the filter of the non-aggression principle, or NAP - the idea that the initiation of physical force or the threat of force against another person is inherently illegitimate.A key aspect of the NAP is the term "initiation of force". This principle does allow for the use of force if it is in response to the initiation of force by another party. This is more commonly known as the "right to self-defense."Murray Rothbard discusses under what circumstances the right of self-defense should apply when discussing the use of defensive violence, as is the claim in the case of George Zimmerman, in Chapter 12 of The Ethics of Liberty:

It follows that defensive violence may only be used against an actual or directly threatened invasion of a person's property — and may not be used against any nonviolent "harm" that may befall a person's income or property value. Thus, suppose that A, B, C, D … etc. decide, for whatever reason, to boycott the sales of goods from Smith's factory or store. They picket, distribute leaflets, and make speeches — all in a non-invasive manner — calling on everyone to boycott Smith. Smith may lose considerable income, and they may well be doing this for trivial or even immoral reasons; but the fact remains that organizing such a boycott is perfectly within their rights, and if Smith tried to use violence to break up such boycott activities he would be a criminal invader of their property.Defensive violence, therefore, must be confined to resisting invasive acts against person or property. But such invasion may include two corollaries to actual physical aggression: intimidation, or a direct threat of physical violence; and fraud, which involves the appropriation of someone else's property without his consent, and is therefore "implicit theft."

Rothbard makes clear that defensive violence is not justified in order to correct any wrong or perceived wrong that might be bestowed upon him. Violence is only justified in order to resist another act that violates one's property rights, whether through theft or a violation of the person's body.How would this apply to the incident between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin?We'll look to some more insight from Rothbard to fight out:

It is important to insist, however, that the threat of aggression be palpable, immediate, and direct; in short, that it be embodied in the initiation of an overt act. Any remote or indirect criterion — any "risk" or "threat" — is simply an excuse for invasive action by the supposed "defender" against the alleged "threat." One of the major arguments, for example, for the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s was that the imbibing of alcohol increased the likelihood of (unspecified) people committing various crimes; therefore, prohibition was held to be a "defensive" act in defense of person and property. In fact, of course, it was brutally invasive of the rights of person and property, of the right to buy, sell, and use alcoholic beverages.In the same way, it could be held that

the failure to ingest vitamins makes people more irritable, that

the failure is therefore likely to increase crime, and that therefore

everyone should be forced to take the proper amount of vitamins daily.

Once we bring in "threats" to person and property that are vague and future — i.e., are not overt and immediate then all manner of tyranny becomes excusable. The only way to guard against such despotism is to keep the criterion of perceived invasion clear and immediate and overt. For, in the inevitable case of fuzzy or unclear actions, we must bend over backwards to require the threat of invasion to be direct and immediate, and therefore to allow people to do whatever they may be doing. In short, the burden of proof that the aggression has really begun must be on the person who employs the defensive violence.

Under libertarian principle, the burden of proof would have to be Zimmerman if his claim is that the violent act of firing his gun upon Martin was defensive. In this case, the evidence from the trial seem to clearly point to Martin as the initiator of the violence. While we do know that Zimmerman was keeping an eye on Martin's movements in the neighborhood due to his belief that Martin's behavior seemed suspicious, this was not an aggressive violent act against Martin.It is clear that Martin did not like the fact that Zimmerman was watching him, but that in itself is not a justification for initiating violence upon Zimmerman. Both Martin and Zimmerman had the right to be in the public area of the neighborhood, and to move about as they see fit within that neighborhood.There is much noise in the media regarding Zimmerman's motives, whether or not Trayvon Martin was a "thug", and all sorts of other distractions from the important question: "Who initiated violence?"The facts available seem to overwhelmingly point to Martin, to the point that Zimmerman was not even charged until the case being a national issue and political pressure picked up. This being the case, one would think Rothbard would have agreed with the decision of the jury examined the evidence more than anyone, and that Zimmerman's use of defensive violence was indeed justified.