White Men in AL Restrained Matthew Reeves, Murdered Him in Front of Spectators.The Magic of Believing in Authority Transforms Said Evil Conduct into Good/Necessary Conduct when its Done by Authorities
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ART IS FROM KEVIN RASHID JOHNSON . CLiICK TO SEE FULL IMAGE.
From [HERE] Matthew Reeves offered no final words and only few movements as his execution was carried out Thursday evening at Holman Prison in Atmore.
Reeves was pronounced dead around 9:24 p.m., according to Commissioner John Hamm. His execution began around 9:03 p.m., after a stay was lifted at 7:25 p.m. from the nation’s highest court.
Reeves had no final words, no final meal and no spiritual advisor present for his execution. As the execution began, Reeves grimaced and rose his head slightly to look at the IV in his arm, before he laid his head back down. Around 9:09 p.m., he closed his eyes, though his abdomen continued moving.
Shortly after that time, a prison official performed a consciousness test which consisted of a hand wave over his face and an arm pinch. Before 9:15 p.m., Reeves stopped moving. After Reeves was pronounced dead, Hamm read a statement from the family of Willie Johnson to gathered media witnesses.
“After 26 years, justice has finally been served,” Hamm read from the family’s statement. “Our family can now have some closure.” [MORE]. How barbaric and moronic.
Authorities executed Matthew Reeves despite substantial evidence that he has intellectual disability and that his conviction and death sentence are not reliable.
In 1996, when he was just 18 years old, Matthew Reeves went along with his brother Julius and several other people who planned to commit a robbery. Their car broke down, and when a passing driver stopped and offered to tow their car, Julius decided they would rob the man. Mr. Reeves was arrested and accused of fatally shooting the driver.
Mr. Reeves was too poor to hire a lawyer. His court-appointed lawyers had hundreds of pages of psychological and other records suggesting they needed to have Mr. Reeves evaluated for intellectual disability, but even after the trial court granted them funds, they never hired an expert to evaluate Mr. Reeves prior to trial.
As a result, the jury never heard powerful mitigating evidence about Mr. Reeves’s intellectual disability, including that he failed the first, fourth, and fifth grades and was placed in special education classes, but never advanced beyond middle school.
He was treated for mental health issues beginning when he was eight years old. At age 14, testing revealed that Matthew had “severe deficiencies in non-verbal social intelligence skills and his ability to see consequences.”
A neuropsychologist diagnosed Mr. Reeves with intellectual disability based on testing that revealed he had an IQ of 71 and could read at only a third-grade level. (The State’s expert found his IQ score was even lower, at 68.)
While the jury heard that Mr. Reeves was influenced by his brother Julius, it did not hear evidence that his low intellectual functioning made him particularly susceptible to the influence of others.
Matthew Reeves was convicted in Dallas County of capital murder during a robbery and was sentenced to death even though two jurors voted against a death sentence.
In any other state, the jury’s nonunanimous verdict would bar his execution. Alabama is the only state where a person can be sentenced to death based on a jury’s nonunanimous verdict.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the Eighth Amendment bars the death penalty for children, drawing a line at age 18 that put Matthew Reeves within months of being ineligible for execution based on his young age.
After the Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that a person with intellectual disability cannot be executed, Mr. Reeves’s new lawyers presented expert testimony and other evidence showing that Mr. Reeves has intellectual disability.
But the state courts denied relief, and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, following the same reasoning it used to deny relief to Willie Smith, who was executed in October despite strong evidence that he had intellectual disability. [MORE]
Authority does not come from any valid basis or source in reality. Where did authorities acquire the right to murder people? It didn’t come from individuals, who clearly have no right to commit unprovoked acts of violence on others. An execution; strapping someone to a chair and purposefully injecting them with lethal poisons to kill them at a scheduled time is an intentional killing of a human being with premeditation and deliberation, aka intentional murder. Apparently the right to do so comes from the government’s right to rule or its so-called authority. Allegedly governmental power comes from the people. That is, we delegate our individual power to the government for it to act on our behalf. However, it goes without saying that people cannot delegate powers or rights that they do not themselves possess. An agent or representative can only be authorized to hold the power of the principal. It is impossible for an agent to possess more power than the principal. If you don’t have the right to initiate unprovoked acts of violence against other people then how can you delegate or authorize anyone else acting on your behalf to do so? Your neighbor has no right to stop, search and detain you and put you into handcuffs, kidnap you and lock you in a basement for failing to comply with one his commands. So, how could your neighbor delegate a government representative the power to do so? if multiple neighbors got together and acted to detain and arrest you would such conduct by them be legitimate? Could the group of neighbors authorize their government representative to do something that they couldn’t do themselves? Could the group transfer powers it doesn’t have? Can you make a mirror out of a brick? Of course not. Where would the additional or extra power come from? Nevertheless that is exactly what most “civilized” governments claim provides the basis for their rulership over people.
Government “authority” can be summed up as the right to rule over people. It is the idea that some people have the moral right to forcibly control others, and that, consequently, those others have the moral obligation to obey.’ [MORE]. Lysander Spooner explained,
“it is impossible that a government should have any rights, except such as the individuals composing it had previously had, as individuals. They could not delegate to a government any rights which they did not themselves possess. They could not contribute to the government any rights, except such as they themselves possessed as individuals.”
Similarly, undeceiver Larken Rose observes,
“Despite all of the complex rituals and convoluted rationalizations, all modern belief in “government” rests on the notion that mere mortals can, through certain political procedures, bestow upon some people various rights which none of the people possessed to begin with. The inherent lunacy of such a notion should be obvious. There is no ritual or document through which any group of people can delegate to someone else a right which no one in the group possesses.‘
There is also no valid justification for authority, the right to rule over people. FUNKTIONARY defines authority as ‘a cartoon, an alleged image of the Law or the notion of an implied right and application of that "right" of individuals or groups of same to control or exercise external power over others, which has no meaning in reality.’ FUNKTIONARY explains that authority is a farce.” What justifies the government authorities’ extra-human powers to rule over people and do things which no individual or group of individuals can do?
MAJORITY RULE. Is government authority justified or made legitimate if a majority of people support it? Michael Huemer explains, “The fact that a majority of persons favor some rule does not justify imposing that rule by force on those who do not agree to it nor coercively punishing those who disobey the rule. To do so is, typically, to disrespect the dissenters and treat them as inferiors.” He states, “the will of a majority does not suffice to cancel or outweigh the rights of a minority. An action that is normally impermissible does not suddenly become alright merely because most people support it. Consider a hypothetical example, which I call the Democratic Dinner Party:
I go out for dinner with four students, At the end of the meal, there is a debate about how the bill should he divided up, a topic we have not previously discussed. I propose that each person should pay for the items that he or she ordered. "Ihree of the students, however, make the alternative proposal that I should be forced to pay for the entire meal, Since they are a majority, am I now morally obl~atsd to pay for their meals? And are they entitled to force me to do so? If I refuse, may they kidnap me and lock me in a cage?
No, I am not obligated to pay for everyone, and they are not entitled to force me to do so. This example shows that majority will does not cancel or outweigh individual rights. In this case, my right to my own money and my general liberty right are not canceled or outweighed merely because a majority of the group wants to take away my money or imprison me.
This example is on point because, again, what we need from a theory of political authority is an explanation for why the state should be entitled to engage in behavior that would be deemed to violate individual rights if performed by anyone other than the government. [MORE]
SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY. How about the social contract theory - the idea that there is a contract between people and the government in which the government protects the people and enforces the laws, in exchange for citizens obedience and taxes? That is, people agreed to obey the government and must do so. If such an agreement exists, WHEN DID YOU SIGN IT? We were born into this arrangement, no one signed anything. Yet we are bound to obey authority.
As explained, by Larken Rose “Even if someone were silly enough to actually tell someone else, “I agree to let you forcibly control me,” the moment the controller must force the “controllee” to do something, there is obviously no longer “consent.” Prior to that moment, there is no “governing” – only voluntary cooperation. Expressing the concept more precisely exposes its inherent schizophrenia: “I agree to let you force things upon me, whether I agree to them or not.””
IMPLICIT AGREEMENT. What about an implicit agreement to obey authority - where we are deemed from birth to have agreed to obey authority until we decline, opt out or reject it? This proposition is also an illusion because whether you reject or object to authority you must obey authority regardless. You have no real choice in the matter.
AGREEMENT BY ACCEPTING BENEFITS. Perhaps authority is made legitimate when citizens agree to accept the benefits provided by government, such as public schools or police “service?” For the same reasons no one has an implicit contract with the government, government authority is not made legitimate through acceptance of benefits. Whether a person accepts the benefits of government or not, all persons are subject to the laws and required to obey authority.
CONSENT BY PRESENCE. How about consent to authority by simply remaining in a particular location - consent by presence on the land? In other words, in order to remain on your own land then you must pay a government and obey laws to do so. Larken Rose explains, “To tell someone that his only valid choices are either to leave the “country” or to abide by whatever commands the politicians issue logically implies that everything in the “country” is the property of the politicians. If a person can spend year after year paying for his home, or even building it himself, and his choices are still to either obey the politicians or get out, that means that his house and the time and effort he invested in the house are the property of the politicians. And for one person’s time and effort to rightfully belong to another is the definition of slavery. That is exactly what the “implied consent” theory means: that every “country” is a huge slave plantation, and that everything and everyone there is the property of the politicians. And, of course, the master does not need the consent of his slave.” This is also circular thinking in that saying the government has authority over everything and everybody cannot also be a justification for the legitimacy of such authority in the first place. At any rate according to such non-logic, as stated by Huemer, “Those seeking to avoid all governmental jurisdiction have three options: they may live in the ocean, move to Antarctica, or commit suicide.” [MORE]
CONSENT THRU PARTICIPATION. Finally, does consent through participation make government authority legitimate or valid? Not at all. “If you didn’t vote in the election, would you then not have to obey the laws made by whoever wins? Of course not. You will be subject to the same laws whether you vote or not.” [MORE]
Thus, authority is an illusion, an unreality. As explained by FUNKTIONARY “Authority is rule through coercion. It “is the means by which society uses to control its population.” Authority is a “cartoon” or an “image of law” because “people cannot delegate rights they do not have, which makes it impossible for anyone to acquire the right to rule (”authority”). People cannot alter morality, which makes the “laws” of “government” devoid of any inherent “authority.” Ergo, “authority”-the right to rule-cannot logically exist. The concept itself is self-contradictory, like the concept of a “militant pacifist.” A human being cannot have superhuman rights, and therefore no one can have the inherent right to rule.’
Authorities cannot alter morality. The fact that government authorities engage in particular conduct or an activity cannot transform otherwise evil or immoral conduct into something good, necessary or immoral. A murder committed by a government orderly is still a murder; the only difference is your falsified consciousness, which makes you perceive it as an “execution” for a “convict” on “death row.” Also, the fact that politicians have enacted a law doesn’t mean that violation of the law is wrong or immoral. It only means an individual violated the law, nothing more (unless it was already immoral to do so). Larken Rose states,
Mortals cannot alter morality any more than they can alter the laws of mathematics. Their understanding of something may change, but they cannot, by decree, change the nature of the universe. Nor would anyone sane attempt to. Yet that is what every new “law” passed by politicians pretends to be: a change in what constitutes moral behavior. And as idiotic as that notion is, it is a necessary element to the belief in “government”: the idea that the masses are morally obligated to obey the “lawmakers”– that disobeying (”breaking the law”) is morally wrong – not because the politicians’ commands happen to match the objective rules of morality, but because their commands dictate and determine what is moral and what is not.
Understanding the simple fact that mere mortals cannot make good into evil, or evil into good, all by itself makes the myth of “government” disintegrate. Anyone who fully understands that one simple truth cannot continue to believe in “government,” because if the politicians lack such a supernatural power, their commands carry no inherent legitimacy, and they cease to be “authority.” Unless good is whatever the politicians say it is – unless right and wrong actually come from the whims of the politician-gods – then no one can have any moral obligation to respect or obey the commands of the politicians, and their “laws” become utterly invalid and irrelevant.
Freedom and authority cannot co-exist because authority is slavery. FUNKTIONARY explains, “There is no freedom in the presence of so-called authority, i.e. outside of one's Self and Self-Nature.) “ Obedience to authority is “the highest form of the power-fear systemic. . .slavery sold to both children and adults alike deceptively packaged in a respectfully sounding label.” Jeremy Locke stated, “Slavery is not a concept of totality. Slavery exists wherever the freedom of man is destroyed. Theft and bullying are slavery. In history, African natives, Jews and many others have experienced lifelong slavery. The ultimate slavery is murder. Slavery stops people from being able to make choices for their own lives. Everything that restricts your mind, your movements and your speech is evil. Slavery is found in both the partial and complete destruction of freedom. . . Authorities “exercise overwhelming force in the name of propriety and public good. They destroy freedom, and put human lives under other people's control.” He further states, “The lie of tyranny is that you will maintain the freedom of life by obeying authority. The choices it offers you are a lifetime of obedience or death“
FUNKTIONARY states, “Only you have authority over your Self...anything else. i.e.. to accept any authority external to one's Self once of discriminating age, is the very definition of irresponsibility.” Similarly Locke states,
There is no authority on earth that can rightfully govern your life. Born to this world, you and you alone control your eyes, your ears, your tongue, your hands and your mind. All authority which claims to be able to dispose of you and your abilities is deceit.
You were born to this world so that you might have the free agency of life. Life is liberty. With liberty and faith in this world, you can learn and do anything. Anyone who tells you that you must yield your mind, your body, or your possessions to authority is evil.
Rose makes it plain, “the belief in “authority,” which includes all belief in “government,” is irrational and self-contradictory; it is contrary to civilization and morality, and constitutes the most dangerous, destructive superstition that has ever existed. Rather than being a force for order and justice, the belief in “authority” is the arch-enemy of humanity.” [MORE]
But overstand that it’s not authority that is evil - authority is a granfalloon, an empty representation having no basis in reality, it doesn’t actually exist. Rather, it is the belief in authority which is evil, a curse upon mankind. FUNKTIONARY explains, belief in authority is no different than “Most beliefs [which] are merely the result of indoctrination, acculturation, programming and conditioning.” “Belief” itself is a cultural conditioning imposed on you by others; it is also a slavery. [MORE]
Authority doesn’t have to be fought and destroyed - just dropped by people. So, where a critical mass of individuals see authority for what it is, a farce, they will drop it the same way they would discard a wooden coin or expired coupon. As explained by FUNKTIONARY:
The real threat to "authority" is the masses overcoming info-gaps and verigaps through self-knowledge and the proliferation of symbols of opposition, not crime or destruction of property.”
