I can help with that. Here's a temporary link to the Clement opinion; download it now because I don't propose to keep this up on the web very long.
Clement
Sylvia, no problem about the name thing. I've got a pretty thick skin about it; you pretty much have to start singing the racist version of the Daniel Boone song ("But the bear was bigger so he ran like a....") to make the needle of my annoyance meter tick on that score.
As for "even libertarians don't advocate abolishing government entirely; that's anarchism" -- correct. I am an anarchist; pleased to make your acquaintance. I believe it was our host who used first used the l-word here.
As to the pointless tax debate, I didn't mean to start that and don't want to fan the flames here when I have a perfectly good blog of my own. I just wanted to make a mildly funny crack that would remind people that some folks are just as genuinely aggrieved about taxation-at-gunpoint (please pardon the redundancy) as liberals famously are about poverty. It's not so much a lack of compassion as it is a difference in values.
Patrick, thanks for the kind word. But please don't tell the State Department that the name on the passport they gave me is a pseudonym. They were quite convinced by the birth certificate I presented, and I'd hate to have them chasing me for documents fraud.
As for mugging, I'm also one of those tall heavy guys that get left alone on the streets despite being perfectly harmless. However, I did once have my way barred by a huge man with prison muscles who said very roughly "How about some money." (Note lack of question mark.) Without conscious thought, and without breaking stride, I shouldered him aside (he was blocking the sidewalk of a busy street by standing in the narrow passage between the wall and a utility pole) and proceeded on up the street.
My walking companions say he just stared after me with a shellshocked expression on his face. Apparently that had never happened to him before. As for me, I just had a habit of ignoring aggressive panhandlers, and rightly or wrongly that's the subroutine he triggered.
It's odd how empathetic liberals never seem to have any empathy for the people who are going to have to pay their higher taxes. That's the mugging that turns people away from modern liberalism. Some people just just can't tolerate the pain or indignity or moral outrage of being relieved of their goods at gunpoint, whether it "only makes sense" or not.
Veering back toward the subject of the post, I very much agree with Patrick. When you live in a society where prison rape is considered a humorously piquant enhancement of justice, it only makes sense to do some caring in advance.
I find it's worth going to great lengths not to give a valid phone number to the companies I do business with. In some cases that's not possible, but when you move you can often avoid doing an update even there. And many, not all, web forms will accept a "declined" statement in the mandatory phone number box.
I have one student loan company who keeps sending me nastygrams insisting that "a federal regulation requires us to maintain a current phone number for you." No doubt it does, but until I see a regulation requiring me to provide such a phone number, or until my attention is drawn to the provision of my note wherein I promised to do so (I don't think it's in there, but my copy of the note is deep in storage) they are going to continue to be SOL.
"What's the limit on the price you'll pay, not to be a slave?"
I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure, however, that I draw the line somewhere before we come to preemptive killings of people who aren't currently, actively, gun-and-whip-and-chains-in-hand, trying to enslave anyone.
Crossing that line puts you in the same camp, or at least the same campground, as all those nervous monarchs of fable, who went around murdering babies because the omens threatened doom if the babes were allowed to grow up.
Re: "more interested in rehabilitating the idea of political mass killings"
Exactly. A utilitarian argument for atrocity? I thought history had judged the makers of such arguments, and moved on in sorrow and distaste.
"Bush is an unmitigated disaster. There. Are we agreed?"
Heck, I'm an anarchist who thinks libertarians are too fond of government -- making me less welcome in this company than an ant at a picnic. But "Bush is an unmitigated disaster?" That's easy. One takes one's common ground where one can find it.
I've been reading this whole "Nader Voter" set of discussions with deep fascination. In the market anarchist caverns where I hang out, there's frequent discussion of whether our electoral distaste for Republicans is electing Democrats, who are viewed as even worse. The view that their disastrousness is roughly equivalent is an unpopular minority in our unpopular minority. I never realized before now that at least part of the Nader faction was animated by the same view, or perhaps a perverse mirror image of it.
My "do you have a mouse in your pocket?" is the cleaned-up version of the old rhetorical rejection of the false "we." When someone tries to include you in a "we" that you don't feel part of, the traditional response is "We? What do you mean, we? Do you have a turd in your pocket?" Translates as semi-funny emphatic rejection of false or forced collectivism.
Patrick's blog comments are probably not the best place to get into the details of why I utterly reject the utilitarian arguments for coercive government. My name above links to my blog, where I've got a bit more material on the subject. The very short version is simply, that noble ends do not justify immoral means.
Your suggestion that I attempt to sieze the barrel of the gun and point it where it would achieve *my* goals instead of *your* goals really doesn't come to grips with the fact that I've got a problem with the entire exercise of enslaving others to achieve goals, however salutory those goals might be.
And having said that much, I should probably apologize to our gracious host, let Hal have the last word, and move on. Sorry for trying everyone's patience!
"We are the government."
Hal, you got a mouse in your pocket?
It's hard to imagine any definition of government that does not involve some claim to the right to push people around at gunpoint under some set of circumstances. That's what "people in power" (to return to my original point) do. And they always collect at least a paycheck from the folks whose productivity they harvest at gunpoint.
Just don't accuse me of any of that, because I don't play that game any more. Armed robbery would be a cleaner and more honest profession, because at least the armed robber doesn't pretend he's doing it for your own good.
And the *reason* those in power habitually underestimate how radicalizing it is when individuals find themselves frustrated in their sincere attempts to do good work?
Quite simply, that those in power are not, and frequently have never been, part of any productive class. The art of getting power and staying in power is a parasitic, not a productive, art.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 1 |
| 2003 | 13 |
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