Forwarded message:

Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 01:36:56 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Horowitz <alanh@infi.net> Subject: Re: "adjust your attitude with their billy club"

"Given the loss of privacy tolerated by 99.9999% of American citizens in the past twenty years, no one has a right to complain about the government taking new powers for itself."

You cannot have it both ways. If you are free to define what is or is not a public nuisance when you do it; likewise am I.

To the first comment, numerical superiority is not sufficient reason in a democracy to justify actions by that democracy. One of the basic ideas behind democracy is that certain aspects of individuals are inherent and uncontrollable by that democracy (ie rights). To my mind democracy is the only form of government which recognizes a priori that everyone is not alike and therefore will want different things. This can be said of no other form of government which treats persons as identical cogs in a government machine. In short, democracy is not mob rule however much the majority might like that idea. I would say that the first comment above can be said another way, "If you have been raped once then you should not complain any about subsequent rapes." Clearly utter bullshit. This is pure and simple victim-speak. As to the second, you are not free to define public nuisance, only nuisances to yourself. The burden of proof rests on the individual to prove that such actions by a third party are a public nuisance. For something to be a public nuisance its effects MUST extend to property or persons other than the instigator AND it must be shown that damage occurs without prior permission. Simply because they do something that irks you does not make it public let alone a nuisance. Jim Choate