Omni has a brilliant post about the inefficacy of authorities

Let me just give you her point

11) Once in a blue moon, the wrongdoer WILL be penalized; said penalty will almost never be severe enough to counteract the fun of doing the evil deed, and even if it IS the overall fun to punishment ratio remains way too high for getting the occasional butt-kicking to discourage them from misbehaving.

She discusses, in depth, a point well developed by Hannah Arendt and Ayn Rand. This essay fits very well with two that I read in my spare time today,

[Hey!! A guy just mentioned Hank Thompson on the Dave Thompson show! I used to run around singing "I've got a Humpty Dumpty Heart" when I was Liina's age. Of course, I sang "howt" back then. It was a bit embarassing when Mom, who goes around with one of those oxygen tanks these days, told him that personally at a concert at Cookson Hills, Oklahoma with me there. I mean, I was a 41-year-old, big, fat guy with a Groucho Marx glasses-and-mustache look for God's sake!]

What the H was I saying?

Oh! Here's a Mises.com essay, The Justice and Prudence of War: Toward A Libertarian Analysis By Roderick Long
and one of his references, Understanding the Global Crisis: Reclaiming Rand’s Radical Legacy, by Chris Matthew Sciabarra.

Those are two magnificent intellectual tours de force.

Here's a bit of Long:

The non-consequentialist core of libertarian ethical theory is an egalitarian commitment; specifically, a commitment not to socioeconomic equality but to equality in authority. Indeed, libertarians' lack of enthusiasm for enforced socioeconomic equality stems precisely from their concern that it can be achieved only at the cost of this for libertarians more fundamental form of equality.[4]

The libertarian "non-aggression principle" expresses the conviction that forcibly to subordinate the person or property of another to one's own aims is to assume an unjustifiable inequality in authority between oneself and the other. And it is because this equality in authority likewise holds between private citizens and public officials that governments are forbidden to exercise any powers not available to people generally; libertarianism requires not just equality before the law but equality with the law.

And this bit, which I believe I've said myself (I've at least hinted at this strongly):

Since a libertarian polity's quarrel is with enemy regimes, not enemy peoples, it should adopt a strategy of covert operations and assassinations — as a substitute for, not a supplement to, conventional warfare.

And a bit of Sciabarra:

I have strongly supported the attempt to bring to justice the fugitives of 9/11-the murderous Al Qaeda-or "to bring justice to them," as President Bush has said. I think this is an unconventional war requiring unconventional warfare, including ongoing disruption of terrorist finance, weapons, and communications networks. But I remain wary of any long-term U.S. expansion into the region. And I believe that a projected U.S. occupation of Iraq to bring about "democratic" regime change would not be comparable to the German and Japanese models of the post-World War II era.

Sciabarra will tell you in that essay what Ayn Rand had to say about evil-doers that jibes with Omni's extremely important article. Hannah Arendt had tons to say about the "banality if evil" which it would serve you well to study. And Long's works provide a great bridge between Libertarians, Objectivists and Liberals. I like Sciabarra best, myself.

BTW, back to Omni's post, Robert Ringer has done some serious railing against teacher approved bullying in schools (public and private) that should be considered in this discussion.