On Tuesday, November 13, 2001, at 11:20 AM, Faustine wrote:
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Tim wrote: On Monday, November 12, 2001, at 08:42 PM, Faustine wrote:
Why talk about it though? The sheer satisfaction of imagining feds and sheeple crapping their pants in fearful anticipation? Even if nothing happened at all, you have to realize unsympathetic people who aren't in on your peculiar brand of humor are going to take things like this at face value and hold it against you. You risk getting slapped around with the anti- paramilitary training statutes whether you're kidding or not.
I'm not kidding. I was there from Friday morning to last night.
Fine. I dont know why you seem to be missing my point: being provoked into incriminating yourself by an anonymous troll is an entirely different issue from discussing the substance of whatever it is you happen to be doing.
No, _you_ miss the point: that I was not "incriminating" myself in any way. You and your kind need to read up on Burroughs' "The Policeman Inside." "If we do not censor ourselves, others will do it for us." "Cypherpunks should voluntarily restrict the topics they discuss." "We should impose voluntary self-labeling of all posts, so that Congress will not." "I must not think certain thoughts, and I must report others who do."
I just happen to have this gut-level common sense belief that if people might be able to use something against any given person, it's counterproductive and potentially dangerous to broadcast it the way you always do.
Ah, weapons training by me and my friends is somehow counterproductive and dangerous? The fact that the First and Second Amendments protect such activities is counterproductive and dangerous to you? Please explain how my one paragraph summary of my weekend activities provided "dangerous" people with knowledge they didn't already have. Your "policeman inside" has been getting way too loud. Stop listening to her or him.
Having moral courage is one thing, playing straight into the hands of people who wish you ill is quite another. It's none of my business what you do, but I'll be damned if I don't have the right to say I think you're making a mistake by talking about it.
Your concern for me is touching, but it is inappropropriate. Some kind of chick thing, I guess. Butt out. Also, your comments were a lot more than concerns about me. You also implied that my exercise of my fundamental rights of free speech, free association, Second Amendment rights, etc. was somehow putting the list and its members at risk.
As for "getting slapped around," I presume you plan to back this up with something more than your "intuition"?
It's not about intuition, just reading the news and putting two and two together. Everything I've seen about what's happening these days indicates that law enforcement will be looking for any excuse they can find to crack down on people they don't like. If they can keep people off planes for moronic reasons like reading Hayduke and Harry Potter, what else are they going to do with what's already on the books? It's probably just a bad case of pantscrapping paranoia, but I still think it's better to think a few steps ahead.
If you'll look at the archives, we had this conversation a few months ago. Nothing has changed.
Why do you continue to waste our time, then? And since you have repeatedly urged that I simply filter you out, I say, "Physician, heal thyself." Meanwhile, I'll continue to talk about what I think is important. All of you who are calling for restraint, for self-labeling, for installing new moderators...I suggest you either start a new mailing list or set up a CDR node implementing your policies on restraint, labeling, and niceness. --Tim May "They played all kinds of games, kept the House in session all night, and it was a very complicated bill. Maybe a handful of staffers actually read it, but the bill definitely was not available to members before the vote." --Rep. Ron Paul, TX, on how few Congresscritters saw the USA-PATRIOT Bill before voting overwhelmingly to imposed a police state