The Godfather Movie on This Day in History

 

The Godfather movie debuted on this in 1972. The Godfather is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made, as well as a landmark of the gangster genre. It was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1990, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and is ranked the second-greatest film in American cinema (behind Citizen Kane) by the American Film Institute. 

The Godfather of Libertarianism Murray N. Rothbard weighed in on The Godfather movie: 

"It is interesting to observe the contrasting attitudes of our left-liberal culture to the two kinds of crime, organized versus unorganized. Organized crime is essentially anarcho-capitalist, a productive industry struggling to govern itself; apart from attempts to monopolize and injure competitors, it is productive and non-aggressive. Unorganized, or street, crime, in contrast, is random, punkish, viciously aggressive against the innocent, and has no redeeming social feature. Wouldn’t you know, then, that our leftist culture hates and reviles the Mafia and organized crime, while it lovingly excuses, and apologizes for, chaotic and random street punks violence which amounts to “anarchy” in the bad, or common meaning. In a sense, street violence embodies the ideal of left-anarchism: since it constitutes an assault on the rights of person and property, and on the rule of law that codifies such rights.

One great scene in The Godfather embodies the difference between right and left anarchism. One errant, former member of the Corleone famiglia abases himself before The Godfather (Marlon Brando). A certain punk had raped and brutalized his daughter. He went to the police and the courts, and the punk was, at last, let go (presumably by crafty ACLU-type lawyers and a soft judicial system). This distraught father now comes to Don Corleone for justice.

Brando gently upbraids the father: 'Why didn’t you come to me? Why did you go to The State?' The inference is clear: the State isn’t engaged in equity and justice; to obtain justice, you must come to the famiglia. Finally, Brando relents: 'What would you have me do?' The father whispers in the Godfather’s ear. 'No, no, that is too much. We will take care of him properly.' So not only do we see anarcho-capitalist justice carried out, but it is clear that the Mafia code has a nicely fashioned theory of proportionate justice. In a world where the idea that the punishment should fit the crime has been abandoned and still struggled over by libertarian theorists it is heart-warming to see that the Mafia has worked it out in practice."

Buy my published Kindle book on Amazon on the Strange History of Medicine and Buy my book: The Folly of Socialism (40 Chapters)

The Sadistic Dubrow Furniture Store Robbery on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: Philadelphia’s "Black Mafia" gang committed the brutal robbery of the Dubrow Furniture store on this day in 1971. 

The Black Mafia, also known as the Philadelphia Black Mafia (PBM), Black Muslim Mafia and Muslim Mob, was a Philadelphia-based African-American organized crime syndicate. The organization began as a small criminal collective, known for holding up neighborhood crap games and dealing in the illegal drug business, but at its height of operation in the early 70s until about the early 1980s, it managed to consolidate power and control a large portion of criminal activity in various African-American neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia, the Delaware Valley, and South Jersey, including Atlantic City and Camden. In addition to drug trafficking, burglary, and armed robbery, the Black Mafia was also engaged in traditional organized crime activities such as extortion, racketeering, prostitution, loansharking, number running and other illegal gambling rackets.

On January 4, 1971, eight Black Mafia members robbed DuBrow's on South Street in Philadelphia. They entered the store one by one posing as customers. Once all were inside, they pulled guns on the twenty employees present and forced them to lie on the floor in the back of the store where they bound them with tape and electrical cord. Thirteen employees were beaten while two others were shot. A janitor who walked in on the robbery while doing his job was shot and killed. One employee was doused with gasoline and set on fire. After their vicious treatment of the employees, they looted the offices in the store and set more fires to destroy evidence of the robbery. The eight criminals fled the scene as soon as the fire alarm went off, purposefully trampling on one of the victim's bodies as they left. This crime was so notable that W.E.B. Griffin wrote a novel based on it, The Witness, and Philadelphia Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo was quoted as saying that the DuBrow crime was "the most vicious crime I have ever come across."

Buy: And the Word was a god: A New Book on the Most Disputed Text in the New Testament - John 1:1  and The Dark History of the Trinity, is now available on Amazon by clicking here...and both are only 99 cents