From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Mon Sep 10 2001 - 01:58:08 MDT
Russell Blackford wrote:
>
> Chuck Kuecker said
>
> >It's just another baby step toward the eventual police state.
>
> Sounds like it, though I await a cogent summary of what it is actually
> intended to do, without having to interpret the bill myself. There must be
> someone on the list who has a good grasp of and interest in IP/IT law who
> could really lay it out for us. I, for one, would find this very useful.
>
> >Why does this
> >whole subject make me think of how they are trying to control "g*ns"?
>
> I have no idea. Look, I know there are strong views about guns on this list,
> but there are theoretical arguments why even a minarchist state should
> enforce a monopoly on the tools of violence and coercion.
Should the state enforce a monopoly on means of self-defense?
Should a state be empowered to prohibit self-defense or make it
nearly impossible except for a few martial artists?
>They are not not
> necessarily *good* arguments - I have no particular position one way or the
> other about gun control, am quite happy that discussions about it are
> relegated to some other list that Mike Lorrey runs, and don't want to have
> an argument about the issue with anyone on any side of it.
Then I suggest you don't open up the subject here.
> I simply say that
> most people you'd want as allies - politicians, lawyers and public
> intellectuals - would find the analogy with gun control not very useful.
Too bad. Allies at what price? The issue is human freedom and
self-determination. It has many aspects. That we agree to
group with others to stop one anti-freedom tactic does not mean
that any of us should muzzle ourselves about any other aspects
of such freedom that concern us.
>I
> am finding it difficult to think of even one person whom I know off this
> list with whom I could use such an analogy to suggest that the proposed
> legislation is a *bad* thing. You might conclude that I am surrounded by a
> peer group of liberal intellectuals; perhaps so, but those are the people we
> need on side in the struggle to limit the power of the state.
>
We are going to limit the power of the state by granting that
the state should have unreasonable power over our lives? Come
again?
> Are there better analogies we can look at? My own touchstones for laws that
> attack our freedom (despite being passed by modern liberal democracies) are
> the political advertising legislation that was struck down as unconstutional
> over here in the early 90s - which, among other things, would have prevented
> any paid advertisements on political matters by ordinary people and lobby
> groups, leaving the established political parties with a monopoly - and, in
> the US more recently, the Communications Decency Act. Of course, we have all
> these preposterous drug laws, but that analogy is not going to appeal much
> more widely than the analogy with gun control. Just as most people don't
> like guns, most people don't like drugs. Mutatis mutandis for the proposed
> laws against cloning.
The drug laws are a very, very important analogy as nothing else
has so expanded the power of the state and so trampled on
individual rights in this country in recent times. I am not
interest in emotional appeal to people's prejudice. I am
interested in appealing to their self-interest and freedom and
the good of all of us. I don't plan on combining work against
the SSSCA with all other subjects. But I also don't plan on
walking on eggshells about what my views on other subjects are
in order to fight it.
- samantha
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