From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 1996 10:06:35 +0800
To: hallam@etna.ai.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Responding to Pre-dawn Unannounced Ninja Raids
In-Reply-To: <9607221842.AA00771@Etna.ai.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <199607221905.PAA12591@jekyll.piermont.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



hallam@Etna.ai.mit.edu writes:
> >No one would ever accuse you of supporting freedom, Phill. I'm sure it
> >was an accident.
> 
> Actually I have been very active in circles like Liberty (the UK version
> of the ACLU). Its just that we have entirely different ideas of what liberty 
> is. Perry believes that libery is license and I believe in the utilitarian
> formulation of Liberty as advanced by Mill, Russell et al.

You don't believe in Mill's formulation, Phill. If you did, you
couldn't possibly support 90% of the garbage you talk about. Mill was
a libertarian in the modern sense -- he opposed virtually everything
government did. Yes, his opposition was utilitarian, but so what? You
use utilitarianism to justify the indefensible.

You say I think that my idea of freedom is license. Perhaps. However,
I think my notion is closer to the common conception than yours, which
owes more to Orwellian redefinition than to the normal use of the
term.

> Of course if Perry was interested in genuine liberty instead of a slave
> owner's idea of liberty

Again, that is ad hominem. You say that ad hominem's are fine when one
is questioning a speaker's credentials, but the point is that
Jefferson's credentials are immaterial. You call him a slave owner as
in order to try to taint his ideas. However, ideas cannot be
tainted. If Adolf Hitler felt that high speed autobahns were a good
idea, that doesn't make highways a bad idea simply because of the
person who conceived of them.

Jefferson could have been a mass murderer for all I care. His words
may be evaluated fully independently of his actions. They are not
interdependent.

Perry