From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 16:44:11 +0800
To: Bruce Baugh <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
Message-ID: <199606070328.UAA19061@mail.pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 09:55 PM 6/5/96 -0700, Bruce Baugh wrote:

>The rest of us (in the US) live in a country where the government can now
>pretty much declare anyone they like terrorists, and suspend habeus corpus
>on the flimsiest of grounds, and use evidence against foreigners that
>doesn't have to be presented to the accused, and all sorts of fun stuff.

But if that's true...

>I don't think that my direst claims _will_ come true. But I don't think I'm
>speculating anything that _can't_ happen, and I see much of it as
>increasingly likely in the light of the ongoing furor over crypto and
>related matters.

If that's true (and I don't doubt that it is) doesn't that suggest to you 
that something serious needs to be done to fix the problem?

>From a tagline:

"If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you've
always got."

If you say we shouldn't rock the boat because the bad guys might come, isn't 
it just possible that the REASON the "bad guys might come" is because we 
have not, in the past, adequately rocked the boat?

My impression is that it is frequently the pacifist-types who get us into 
war, because they start the process out by tolerating actions by others that 
turn into more serious actions, etc.  You know, the appeasers.  Are you an 
appeaser?

All I'm advocating is to set up a system which gives government-types a very 
stark choice: War or peace.  Then let them make that choice.  I predict they 
will choose peace.



Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com