At 1:00 PM -0500 12/4/98, Tim May wrote:
At 7:04 AM -0800 12/4/98, Petro wrote:
I just disagree with your "millions who need killing". Because some beleives in a polly-annaish world were taking guns away from the "good guys" also keeps them away from the "bad guys" is no reason to kill them. It's a reason to render them impotent until such time as they wake the hell up, and if they don't manage to wake the hell up until some mugger points a chinese manufactured .25 at them in the middle of the night and just fucking pulls the trigger because murder carries the same punishment (or less) than carrying a gun (enemy of the state) then "we" didn't kill them, they killed themselves.
You are free to adopt the beliefs of what I'll call "the forgiveness libertarians." Summarized, roughly, as: "You've been stealing from me, sending my sons to die in your foreign wars, imprisoning my friends for what they smoke or eat...but let's let bygones be bygones...stop your stealing ways and we'll forget about what you did in the past."
You are (it seems) slightly misinterpreting what I am trying to say. The average individual, Joe Six-pack, doesn't start wars. He doesn't actually imprison anyone (unless he is a cop), and he doesn't (usually) vote for the laws that actually imprison people. In most cases he doesn't even vote at all. He is pawn, at most a peice to be sacrificed. It's the Kings and Queens that are the problem (and to carry the analogy further, the hand[s] that move them) that really diserve our anomosity. The politicians, and not even all of them, should be the targest of "our" ire.
This is a dominant thread of libertarianism, though it is seldom articulated as I have just done. Look at the platform of the Libertarian Party and you'll see this "forget the past, look to the future" approach.
That is because the Libertarians are trying to join the football game, and to even be in the game, you have to be pleasant.
I, on the other hand, have drifted into the camp I will dub "the vengeance libertarians." Summarized, roughly, as:
"You've stolen my property, you've imprisoned my friends, you've passed laws making us all criminals, you've started wars to enrich your military-industrial complex friends, and you're corrupt bastards. You can forget about some kind of "libertarian amnesty." It's going to be payback time, with at least hundreds of thousands of statist judges, politicians, cops, soldiers, and other such persons going to the gallows. Payback time. Welfare recipients are going to have to pay back all that they have stolen, with compounded interest. Out of their pockets, or while in labor camps. Payback time."
Which would be more satisfying to you, to shoot these people (personally I'm in favor of hangings, the ropes are not only a reusable resource, but afterwords we put them in glass cases in museums around the nation/world as permanent reminders of what _will_ happen when the people get pissed enough), or to watch them starve to death as most of them have no useful talents outside their ability to sway the population to their will? -- "To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather naïve, and certainly unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust" http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent. Inc.::petro@playboy.com