[66365] in Cypherpunks
Fruitcake Politics cont. [Noise]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (hallam@ai.mit.edu)
Tue Sep 24 20:36:49 1996
From: hallam@ai.mit.edu
To: jimbell@pacifier.com, cypherpunks@toad.com
Cc: hallam@ai.mit.edu
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 96 20:11:08 -0400
>You're wrong on at least three counts: I absolutely do claim to be a
>libertarian, for one.
And Mr Dupont claims to be the Dalai Lama...
>Secondly, while I advocate a system which I call AP,
>I do not "advocate" the MISUSE of that system for the act of attacking
>people who have no initiated force or fraud.
In the diatribe you proceed to spew forth you define "fraud" as tax
collection. In other words you are calling for the murder of the members
of the IRS. I don't consider your position to be distinguishable from
that of the Oaklahoma city bombers.
Interestingly enough the paragraph that begins by claiming there are
at least three points runs out of steam after only two.
In fact it is not argued from a classical libertarian or liberal
position as claimed. The classical liberal position is that there are
no rights without law so AP is self contradictory. I consider the
authority of Rawls and Cohen on this one somewhat more persuasive
than Bell. Mills certainly argues from this position but I can't
claim to have discussed it with Mills :-)
I don't think that Nozdic would accept the argument either. It is
entirely from false analogies. In law the right of self defense is
limited. You are not entitled to kill someone if you fear that they
might tread on your toe. The force used has to be both necessary and
commensurate. To argue that one is entitled to murder IRS agents
because you disagree with the legitimacy of taxes is certainly not
a liberal position.
It also wont do to disown the consequences of the scheme. Of course
it would be the perfect scheme for getting rid of unwanted spouses
etc. Simply dismissing this as an "unfortunate" side effect is
not credible. Its like Teller's scheme to build a second panama
canal using A bombs, describing the radiation damage caused as
an unfortunate side effect.
Phill
