<rm> }Your other arguments casually dismiss the very real power that large numbers }of able people with good communications can exercise, have just exercised }very recently. } }Nation states are a new creation. In the past many different }kings ruled many different bits of one nation, and one king often }ruled parts of more than one nation. } }Today nation states are almost universal, and people can no longer }imagine what a nation is, other than a nation state. But the net }is a nation, and is not a state, and nationalism is a force that }governments usually cannot withstand. <rm> I'll just come out admit right now that I read Wired. Yeah, sue me. But my point is that there was an article in 4.01 (January) on page 86 titled "Is Government Obsolete? Is the free market all we need to build a robust and democratic political economy for the 21st century?" I think the govt sees the beginning of the end. They will not be completely done away with, but they will lose the vast amount of power that they now have and be reduced in size till they are functioning as a mediator of disputes between this country and others, a regulator of some laws involving ecology, labor laws, and so on. But they will have lost control over the direction of the nation. Will the nation be able to be cohesive without them? I don't even think our concept of what a nation is will be the same when that time eventually does come. One think does stand to reason though, when govt gets in the way of business, govt eventually gets run over. Regulating the net in content brings them one step closer to obsolescence. The govt is not yet in it's death throwes, but it has seen it's own fate. The net regulation is one more feeble attempt at avoiding destiny. King Laius will not avoid his fate by sending his son away this time, just like he didn't the first time. "...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.---That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, ---That whenever any Form of government becomes destructive to those ends, it os the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying it's foundation on such priciples and organizing it's powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accostomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
From the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.
lunaslide "Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." - -- Abraham Lincoln On the meridian of time there is no injustice, only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. Henry Miller ________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQCPAzEX3QEAAAEEAOGQjhnqGH29pO1WDaXs5GFOVPhCBWyYEk9XEwRmscjveWzH AhA6DeOA480zWNqQURyqE2yPmR8WzT+OXYqmeiQiycKyFA41Vs/Ruf+gXXxe7uXS L5BK3K8oKbfoH0D5/TAkMT4r6BprXFQz4pFc3gY2SSaSPElpMjKHaKBsRsyRABEB AAG0HUplZmYgQ29ubiA8bHVuYXNsaWRlQGxvb3AuY29tiQCVAwUQMRffHzKHaKBs RsyRAQGNhwP9E9xEZ9/LCKnhgtnrqgD7pDoXG2pCy8FoyfFjoImGkG+jF1wELXmB Z0mf8F8CgYkys0mif1XeGDMelr1gzlZAm6LgQt4kcvztMW/aRLn18QP+iwltVT/L p8D37mitOjvuk46sWgAChIaPPPIeg/EaYQjQkmlpWKsEYIoTRy+E8mU= =4Gku -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----