napping or a bank robbery, terrorist murders abroad, hostagetaking,rnmurder for hire, murder in the course of racketeering,rnand murder while serving a life sentence. The latter is particularlyrninteresting, since about the only person a lifer could murderrnwould be either a prison guard or another prisoner. Butrnthere is no reason why a prison guard or a convict (or, for thatrnmatter, the President, a federal chicken doctor, or a visiting dogcatcherrnfrom Denmark) should enjoy what amounts to morernprotection of the law than a gas station attendant.rnThe crime bill also offered a generous serving of gun controlrnchocolate sauce and the usual swag for local and state police asrnwell as some $300 million for “drug emergency areas,” alsornknown as “cities,” that just can’t say no to federal boodle.rnThen it gets back to more meaningless death penalties: deathrnfor anybody who commits a crime with a firearm if the weaponrnhas moved across state or national boundaries. Death again forrnanybody who intentionally kills someone in the District ofrnColumbia in a drug-related crime. And death once more forrnthe much-dreaded “drug kingpins,” laboriously defined in thernbill as those who have had at least three prior felony convictionsrnwith minimum prison sentences of at least 20 years each andrnwho are operating drug enterprises with at least five employeesrnand grossing $10 million a year. Whether convicts who meetrnthis otiose definition are any more common than spies, traitors,rnand genocide-committers is not clear, but my guess is that theyrnare virtually a legal fiction never heard of outside of Miami Vicernreruns.rnDeath, death, death, death, cried the senators as thevrnpacked the bill off to the House. You would think thisrnwas the most bloodthirsty crowd of lawmakers since MadamernDefarge knitted socks in front of the guillotine. But before yourncome to such a conclusion, there is one little secret you oughtrnto know: not since 1963 has the federal government executedrnanybody, nor does it have any facilities for carrying out an execution.rnFor all the blood poured forth on the Senate floor inrnand over this bill and its grisly provisions, it was a fair bet thatrnnot a single person would ever have gone to the gallows underrnit. That is because enforcing the death penalty has nothing torndo with passing more laws to buck up those already on thernbooks that are not enforced anyway, but instead depends onrnwhether those who pass and execute the laws are serious aboutrnjustice. In any event, the bill died in conference, though its descendantrnstalks the Congress today in President Clinton’s “policemanrnon every corner” bill, this time with no less than 64rnnew capital offenses. Who knows what they are? Who cares,rnsince the lawmakers who concocted them have no intention ofrnenforcing them anyway. My guess is that the mega-deathrnpenalty bill last year was never intended to pass, that it was justrngrandstanding for the senators, who intended to execute the billrnitself before any real murderer was executed under its stupidrnand redundant provisions.rnYet one interesting thing about the bill is that it shows howrnconservatives in Congress have totally abandoned the principlernof federalism. One congressional staffer in a Republican officerntold me that the bill’s death penalty provisions were intendedrnto enforce the death penalty in states that “refused” to enact itrnthemselves—in other words, to sneak around the principle ofrnfederalism and states’ rights and to force a criminal statuterndown the throats of unwilling states. I believe strongly in therndeath penalty for a number of criminal offenses, and I believernevery state ought to pass it and enforce it effectively, but underrnno circumstances should the federal goernment be able tornforce or dragoon any state into ado|)ting the death penaltyrnor any other criminal statute it does not want or believe in.rnObviously, it was mainly conser’atives who were pushing thernmega-death bill, so let us endure no more sermons from thesernSolons about “judicial activism” or other violations of federalismrnwhen those violations tread on local interests that are politicallyrnimportant to the lawmakers. Having surrendered thernfederalist and states’ rights principles, they cannot expect thosernprinciples to be respected by others who have more uses for thernfederal leviathan than turning it into an oversized gas chamber.rnThere are several reasons why anarcho-tvrannv flourishes. Inrnthe first place, it is obviously an easy wav for government bureaucratsrnand lawmakers to enhance their o\ n power and thernpublic funds at their disposal by playing on legitimate and wellfoundedrnfears of citizens over crime. It might seem that itrnwould be just as easy for anarcho-trants to actually do somethingrnabout crime instead of rehearsing all the pretenses of doingrnsomething about it. But the fact is that there is almostrnnothing the government today can do about crime. The essentialrnreason for this is that, since the promulgation of the IncorporationrnDoctrine by the Supreme Court and the ensuingrnWarren revolution in criminal law, the control of the criminalrnjustice system has been removed from the control of lawmakersrnand elected officials as well as from law^ enforcement and isrnnow almost entirely subordinate to the judicial system. Thus,rnthere can be no local politician who wins election by promisingrnand carr) ing out an effccti’e program of crime-fighting becausernany effective laws or punishments he might enact will be dependentrnon the consent of the courts. Since law enforcementrnremains primarily a local and state function but is effectivelyrnunder the control of federal courts, local law-and-order leadersrncan do nothing effective and have to make do with anarchotyrannicalrnapplesauce. While crime and public safety remainrnimportant and legitimate concerns of voters, the response ofrnpoliticians and police almost has to be to promise the false andrndangerous solutions of anarcho-tyrannv, to change subtly therndefinition of crime by expanding it to include the innocent andrnthe law-abiding, and to avoid any serious challenge to realrncriminals. And institutionalizing anarcho-tvrannical functionsrnin such agencies as the BATF merclv creates incentives for itsrnbureaucrats to pursue the kind of dangerous and useless measuresrnthe bureau has become notorious for. Under anarchotvranny,rnthe state creates a problem (which sometimes actuallyrnhas some connection to reality), declares an emergency orrncrisis—the drug war, drug emergency areas, the carjacking crisis.rnIslamic fundamentalism—and then exploits that problemrnas an instrument by which it continues to enhance its power,rnthough neither the fake problem it exploits nor the real problemrnthat exists is affected. The anarchy that anarcho-tyrannyrnbreeds thus serves as the rationale for the tyranny it builds,rnand the dynamic of anarcho-tyranny is essentially the samern”ratchet effect” that Robert Higgs identifies as the principalrnsource of Big Government in the 20th centurv.rnBut there is also another reason why anarcho-tyranny flourishes.rnThroughout this century, in tandem with the emergencernof the leviathan state, there has occurred a managed pacificationrnand manipulation of the citizens, with the result thatrnAmericans are increasingly habituated to an entirely passive rolernin government, economy, culture, and now even basic socialrnfunctions such as childrearing and health care. This process ofrnpacification is closely related to the managerial revolution inrn18/CHRONICLESrnrnrn