From: Eric Watt Forste (arkuat@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Feb 18 1997 - 19:14:38 MST
Robin Hanson writes (to Guru George):
>What happened is that people were informed in more vivid detail
>about the conditions of life of real slaves, which convinced them
>that they didn't want to live in a state/nation/etc where those
>sort of things happen to people. Concrete facts were more persuasive
>that abstract arguments about what is or is not "evil" in principle.
Perhaps libertarians should set up pen-pal relationships with people who
are in prison for victimless crimes such as tax evasion, drug dealing,
etc. That would give them something concretely unpleasant to talk about
in vivid detail during their political arguments with their friends.
I think that there are programs of this sort being run by various
anti-Prohibition activist groups. Then there could be more annual
memorials for the people who are shot and killed by law enforcement
agents for no good reason. (Donald Cole? I'm having trouble remembering
his name, and he didn't pop up in Altavista.)
It just gets tiring having to keep concrete examples of the evils of
the world in mind for the sake of winning arguments. But I guess if the
nineteenth-century abolitionists put themselves through it...
-- Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ http://www.pobox.com/~arkuat/
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