On March 31, The New Yorker published an item in its humor vertical, Shouts & Murmurs, titled "L.P.D.: Libertarian Police Department." At least 31,000 people liked it.

I can laugh along with parodies of libertarian ideology. But shouldn't a reductio ad absurdum start with a belief that the target of the satire actually holds? Tom O'Donnell proceeds as if libertarians object to the state enforcing property rights—that is to say, one of the very few state actions that virtually all libertarians find legitimate! If America's sheriffs were all summarily replaced by Libertarian Party officials selected at random, I'm sure some ridiculous things would happen. Just not any of the particular things that were described.

That isn't to say that there weren't parts of the article that made me laugh. It got me thinking too. If the non-libertarian approach to policing* was the target instead, would you need hyperbole or reductio ad absurdum? Or could you just write down what actually happens under the officials elected by non-libertarians? It is, of course, hard to make it funny when all the horrific examples are true.

* * *

I was just finishing up my shift by having sex with a prostitute when I got a call about an opportunity for overtime. A no-knock raid was going down across town.