From: PaR (par@nu-world.com)
Date: Sat Apr 11 1998 - 14:12:01 MDT
>> dangerous means is not to retaliate with even greater primitive and
>> dangerous means. This simply leads to a vicious circle.
>While I agree with the upper statements, your last is at the least foolish,
>and at the worst completely, criminally, ludicrous. To fail to respond with
>greater force to an individual who uses force to impose his will, gain his ro
>her ends simply winds up in a vicious cycle of them demanding more and more
>from you until you are enslaved or dead.
Agreed. After rereading what I had written I realized I had made a mistake.
Can I rephrase my statement to say: there are certain times when using
force is necessary and appropriate, and other times when it is not. I generally
accept the libertarian principal of using force only for ones self defense and not
"pro-actively." The trick and question is knowing when it is approropriate and
necessary, and who gets to decide.
Up here in New Hampshire (yup, here I go again), as well as across the river
in Vermont, we have possibly the highest per capita level of gun ownership in
the industrialized world, and probably the one of the highest in the entire
world, yet I challenge anyone on this list to name one European or other
industrialized nation of the same size or larger as our state, that has a more
restrictive gun policy yet has a lower crime rate. You can't.
"An armed "society" is a polite "society" -- I forget who said this but I think it
is appropriate here. (quotes are mine). Again, I generally agree with you. I am
certainly not a proponent of "gun control" (so-called). My intention in my origional
statement was only meant to imply 1)that *I* would prefer to avoid violence and 2)
that sometimes using "more sophisiticated means" is appropriate. "More sophisticated
means" might include assasinating a dictator like Hitler in an early time frame before
he had the opportunity to start a war, rather waiting until you have a full blown war.
"More sophisticated means" may also mean using non-violence. For example, I think
the IRS is little more than mafia with good PR. But instead of starting a violent
revolution to overthrow the IRS, I simply arrange my affairs so I don't support them
in any way.
I hope this clears up my point.
Sin,
Jason
Temp email address: PaR@NU-WORLD.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:48:54 MST