Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 04:07:36 +0200 (MET DST) Subject: Re: Wine Politics Again! (fwd) To: cypherpunks@toad.com From: nobody@replay.com (Anonymous) Organization: Replay and Company UnLimited Reply-to: nobody@replay.com (Anonymous)
Froomkin wrote:
On Fri, 9 May 1997, Tim May wrote: Every day that passes, I'm more convinced that McVeigh did the right thing. Some innocents died, but, hey, war is hell. Broken eggs and all that.
It ill behooves participants in a democracy to either advocate or even tolerate or even cluck sympathetically at mass murder for political ends. This way lies Bosnia.
A. Michael Froomkin
Agreed. I'm getting progressively more turned off by Tim's developing survivalist/confrontationist stance. I fear that journalists and other casual readers will mistake his positions for common 'cypherpunk' viewpoints. The type of armed, ingrained bitterness towards all aspects and manifestations of government he displays is hazardous to himself personally; I can envisage a simple traffic stop turning violent. Worse, he's demonizing his opponent. This is counter-productive. It's better to try to understand the actual underlying goals of your opponent - it gives you a much better chance at turning him into your ally, or avoiding a conflict if you cannot do that. If he can be neither turned nor avoided, the minimum action to change the status quo should be used. If Tim truly maintains that a 'war' is underway between people like him and the government, than he would be in no position to complain if Clinton's men treated his little hilltop retreat as an enemy outpost. For all his pride in it's defensibility, they could take it out in seconds if respect for due process, the Constitution, and a real concern for the lives of innocents did not stop them. The policies of the current gang in power are bad, and may well get worse. But terrorism is not yet an appropriate response, and I pray that it never will be. Peter Trei trei@Process.com