Re: Pushing the precedents--why the Gonzalez case deserves
At 6:56 PM -0400 4/24/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >No matter what your position is, there are three points about which we >should all be concerned. However, since we have all grown so stupid and >comfortable, I doubt any of you will have the balls to say "Enough is >enough". You need to check some of your facts. I'll be brief: > >1) Saturday afternoon, a US Senator attempted to enter a US Military base >and was refused at the gate. The guards told him that they had their orders >from Janet Reno not to let him pass. Military bases--and ships, labs, submarines, etc.--have security systems in place which the Legislative Branch of Government has no special right to trump by merely showing up. If this is surprising to you, you have a lot of learning to do. >2) This was the first time in US history that such a raid has been conducted >on a private residence without any type of court order, warrant, etc., >whatsoever. There was a search warrant, issued Friday night. In any case, hardly the first time an unwarranted raid has happened. But this one had a warrant, so you're doubly wrong. > >3) Even though the TV news has repeatedly told you otherwise, the Miami >relatives have not broken any laws whatsoever. There is no law written >anywhere on any books in which they were in violation. Janet Reno ordered >them to pack up the kid and drive him to an airport. When they did not, >Reno >declared them criminals. The problem is that Janet Reno does not have the >authority to create laws. Only Congess does. She seems to feel that any >order she gives is law. Better check that warrant point again. The Justice Department and its branches (INS, Marshals, etc.) _enforce_ laws. Granted, they don't make them. Returning a 6-year-old boy to his natural father does not require an Act of Congress: it is done routinely in thousands of similar cases each year. The kidnappers of Elian G. should now face kidnapping charges for the several weeks they held him after being told he was not theirs to hold. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Crypto-Anarchy/Anarcho-Capitalist Errors in Understanding
X-Loop: openpgp.net
From: David J. Brunell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> The key concepts are force and fraud. Neither should be initiated from
one
> human entity to another. By "human entity" I mean person, corporation, or
> government. Why are force and fraud wrong? Because it is against man's
> nature. Man survives by the use of reason, and both force and fraud are
> attempts to short-circuit his mind.
You seem to be an objectivist ("man survives by the use of reason" is
actually false in reality, although I can agree that this is how things
*should* be).
> Because there are those who would use force and fraud against other
people,
> governments have been established and given a legal monopoly on the use of
> force.
By whom have those governments been established? Who gave them that right?
[Note: this has never been the case in history, anyway; all known
governments have been established by the use of force.]
> The only legitimate function of government in a free society is to
> protect its citizens from force and fraud. To do this requires national
and
> local defense infrastructures and an unbiased court system. A government
in
> a free society cannot engage in income redistribution schemes from any
human
> entity to any other, since doing so requires the initiation of force or
the
> threat of force. The United States is not a free society.
The problem with minimal governments (with ANY government) is that they MUST
initiate the use of force, or be reduced to corporation status. This has
been elaborated by someone whose name escapes me now, but basically if I
want to defend myself and a few friends, and someone else wants to enter the
business of law making, and they pay us for this, then the government has
two options: 1) let us do it - in which case, it is just another business
entity, or 2) initiate force against us, to preserve their monopoly. End of
"minimal".
Mark
Re: Microsoft: A Day Of Satisfaction As Corporate BullyGetsComeuppance
X-Loop: openpgp.net From: Tom Vogt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Strawman. Hitler and Stalin weren't the same. However, they were both > > socialists, which was my point. > > you're trying to prove a point by assuming it. come on, you can do > better. I'm not trying to PROVE anything. I'm DEFINING socialism as "state interference in private transactions". > if you argue this way, you've got to accept stalin's time-line. given > the fact that the USSR was doing quite ok (according to his preferences) > at the time of his death (half of europe and parts of asia under strong > USSR control), I doubt he died as a loser. it may have crumbled later, > but that's irrelevant. > > having lost just because you're dead only counts if your goal was > immortality. I was (maybe wrongly) assuming that both those men's goal was world domination. Stalin has failed to achieve that; the Pope is actually quite close to it. [Which, incidentally, is something I don't like.] X-Loop: openpgp.net From: Colin Rafferty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Actually, that was my point. If you redefine a common word to have > your own personal meaning, you can apply it however you want, but no > one will agree with you, since no one has the same underlying > assumptions. Everyone else is speaking English, but you are speaking > some parody of it instead. Dictionaries don't CREATE words; they just record the most common use. Words are tools we use to express concepts. I am less interested in the concept of "governmental ownership of ... goods", considering it a particular case of state intervention in economics (which I define as the study of purposeful, rational human action - again a pretty non-mainstream definition). Whether I use your definition is non-sequitur, what matters is that we manage to communicate *concepts* reliable. So, from now on, you'll know what I mean when I say "socialist", and I'll know what you mean. [Calling it "X" might help you to realize that words don't come from a higher power.] > > Strawman. Hitler and Stalin weren't the same. However, they were both > > socialists, which was my point. > > But only by your personal definition, not by the one the rest of the > world uses. I am pretty sure that my daughter uses no definition, being only 7 months old. Furthermore, I see no value in majority rule, and even less when it comes to word definitions. Every man has his particular definition in mind when he speaks about something. Communication is about sharing *concepts*, not words - I still think about some of the issues I talk about here in my native language, Romanian, and that doesn't prevent me from expressing the concepts to you. Mark
