In message <199602070213.UAA03036@einstein.ssz.com>, Jim Choate writes:
If the intent is to motivate others to kill or otherwise harm others simply because you don't agree with them or their actions is reprehensible and moraly or ethicaly undefensible.
I agree, but not for your reasons. "Reprehensible" and "ethically undefensible" both presupose that *you* can make an objective moral judgement that you are right and others are wrong, which is no better than the moral judgement that the politicians are making. A better reason for agreeing with your position is simply that value judgements of any kind are subjective, and therefore they cannot apply to everyone and hence it is a clear coercion to try to apply them to everyone. Coercion of one man's subjective views onto another is the fundamental fault in the position of the censors; it's a very fundamental attack on perhaps the most basic freedom we have, regardless of whether there is a Constitution or Ammendments in the country in which we live.
2. How can we keep the government from banning encryption, digital cash, and other systems that will improve our freedom?
By making shure they don't have the authority to make the decision in the first place.
It might well be too late for that: they've already taken the authority. Now we're starting a process of taking it back, and we can do so without bloodshed by moving the source of their power (monetary transactions and the consequent taxation) beyond their reach. That's where crypto comes in, and that's why many of us are here.
Every citizen of this country is a 'government employee' in one sense or another.
It is important that we adopt this overtly innocent view of civil servants and governments as our *servants*, because it is on the grounds of service that they justify their positions and actions on the single day every few years that we get to vote them in. Shoving the term "servant" down their throats at every opportunity is an excellent attack on their positions of power over us. Rich. -- ########### Dr. Rich Artym ================ PGP public key available # galacta # Internet: rich@galacta.demon.co.uk DNS 158.152.156.137 # ->demon # rich@mail.g7exm[.uk].ampr.org DNS 44.131.164.1 # ->ampr # NTS/BBS : g7exm@gb7msw.#33.gbr.eu # ->nexus # Fun : Unix, X, TCP/IP, OSI, kernel, O-O, C++, Soft/Eng # ->NTS # More fun: Regional IP Coordinator Hertfordshire + N.London ########### Q'Quote : "Object type is a detail of its implementation."