"adjust your attitude with their billy club"

At 6:28 AM 7/31/96, Alan Horowitz wrote:
I am a strong libertarian. Sell crack cocaine, rent your pussy to horny middle-aged businessmen, do any non-violent, non-damaging-to-others-property you want, but damn well maintain public order and decorum. Or I will scream to my councilman for the cops to adjust your attitude with their billy club.
When the local cops adjust my attitude with a billy club for dressing like a hippie and lounging around in a public place that my taxes have helped pay for, I'll remember that a "strong libertarian" said that he was doing the right thing. .... In my town, the City-State decided to crack down on the homeless by arresting people for "giving away food" in a public park. They charged the soup providers with various failures to have Health Department permits and for not having a permit to operate a restaurant, pay various fees to the City-State, and so on. I went to a City Council meeting when this was happening (1991-2) and spoke up in the public comment part of the meeting. I pointed out that the very same park at which these "food criminals" were doing their dastardly deeds in was a park at which other people and groups were cooking hot dogs and hamburgers, ladling out bowls of chili, serving potato salad, and generally "distributing food." All, of course, without benefit of licenses, health inspections, OSHA inspections, and so on. I suggested arrests of the picnic groups begin immediately, using the same exact charges used to harass the homeless helpers. The Council members, most of them leftist liberals, had no answer. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

When the local cops adjust my attitude with a billy club for dressing like a hippie and lounging around in a public place
I am a defender of your right to not be harrassed by legal-definition nuisances, not a fashion cop. I gave up on trying to clean up the unwashed masses, a long time ago. But if your definition of "lounging" includes (say) playing your boombox as loud as you want in the park - then mine includes making a buck by burning toxic waste.

In article <ae24e2ee02021004242f@[205.199.118.202]>, tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May) writes:
> At 6:28 AM 7/31/96, Alan Horowitz wrote: >> I am a strong libertarian. Sell crack cocaine, rent your pussy to horny >> middle-aged businessmen, do any non-violent, >> non-damaging-to-others-property you want, but damn well maintain public >> order and decorum. Or I will scream to my councilman for the cops to >> adjust your attitude with their billy club. Someone please, please, please tell me this guy was being facetious. Please? Even if it's not true? Pretty Please??? In a libertarian society, so-called "public decorum" is dictated by who owns the property you are sitting on. If my building code (i.e. the code of laws set by the person who owns the building I live in) says I can blast my boombox, your opinion can go to hell: find another place to live if you don't like it. Or petition the person who owns the place. Burning toxic waste is intrisically damaging to other people, blasting your boombox is not (unless it is so loud as to actually cause ear damage to bystanders, but given the volume of music tolerated at rock concerts, I find this highly unlikely). -Robin

On Thu, 1 Aug 1996, Robin Powell wrote:
Burning toxic waste is intrisically damaging to other people, blasting your boombox is not (unless it is so loud as to actually cause ear damage to bystanders, but given the volume of music tolerated at rock concerts, I find this highly unlikely).
"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.
participants (3)
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Alan Horowitz
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Robin Powell
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tcmay@got.net