At 04:36 AM 9/25/00 -0400, Sampo A Syreeni wrote:
So how do you feel, for instance, about bullying in the form of cooperative isolation of someone by his/her peers? Certainly everybody has the /right/ not to speak to someone...
Freedom of association includes freedom not to associate.
Only that sort of thing harms people more than an occasional, physical punch, something which few liberty-advocating people would say is tolerable.
Exclusion harms you only if it bugs you ---you have to want to be a homosexual atheist boyscout for their exclusion to matter. Non-consensual violence always harms.
I think liberty should carry a pricetag of tolerance.
No, liberty is absolute, and probably not being exercised if *someone* isn't offended. Your suggestion to "play nice" is quaint but irrelevent when talking about sovereign adults. Tolerance means tolerating intolerant groups. The latter-day euros (germans and french esp.) don't get it. When you burn nazi literature you have become them.