From: Russell Blackford (rblackford@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Aug 01 2001 - 19:40:27 MDT
I notice I said
> > _Quadrant_ has just accepted my latest rejoinder to Margaret
> > Somerville in
> > record time. It'll be published in the August issue.
Er, I meant September. I was astonished when I posted the thing off in hard
copy from Melbourne to Sydney on Sunday and received an enthusiastic email
from editor Paddy McGuinness on Wednesday (for a piece 4000 words long;
that's *quick*). Thanks to Reason, Mark and Damien who commented on it in
draft form and to Anders and Eliezer for some other useful comments.
Reason said
>The theocratization of the US can be seen as an illustration of why
>non-repressive societies become repressive societies: give people freedom,
>and that includes the group which wants to use that freedom to set up a
>repressive society. How do you defend against that without becoming a
>repressive society? You don't. It's the paradox of libertarianism and
>anarchism -- neither can really exist in practice. To defend a libertarian
>or anarchist society from determined people and organizations who want to
>bring about another form of society/govenment requires that the libertarian
>or anarchist society organise and become non-libertarian/non-anarchist.
Well, I think you can put a powerful argument that it is not the role of
government or the law to impose a moral/theological/metaphysical consensus.
And you can make this argument to people who are not, in any strong sense,
libertarians.
Russell
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:09:22 MST