From: Jim Wise <jw250@columbia.edu>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 21:18:45 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: Redlining
In-Reply-To: <199612110147.RAA24444@mailmasher.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.95L.961211000718.22509A-100000@konichiwa.cc.columbia.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Tue, 10 Dec 1996, Huge Cajones Remailer wrote:

> One of the great ideas of the modern age is that people have the right
> to form organizations.  It should probably be in the Bill of Rights.
> (We do have the right to "peaceably assemble", but that is not as
> general as the right to organize.)
> 
> You are completely correct that control of human organizational
> activity is the hallmark of a totalitarian state.

I would go further than this, though.  I would say that that mode of 
thought which considers an organization to _be_ an individual, with
rights and responsibilities of its own, is the hallmark of a state.
(_all_ states are totalitarian to some degree, that is what makes them
states).  That is to say, when we say "General Electric owns so and so
many dollars in assets" or "The government has a duty to protect its
citizens", we are accepting the basic precept of statism, that these groups
should be treated as something other than the sum of the individuals
whom they are made up of.

> >Exactly.  Like most, I have a strongly visceral negative reaction to
> >bigotry.  I wish there could be a system of law which contained it.
> >There cannot, or at least not without doing even more harm.
> 
> But what is it that we want to make illegal?  Bigotry is not a well

That's the point I was trying to make.  We cannot outlaw `bigotry'
because any such law would be a basic violation of the rights of
thought, and expression.  What we should do is combat the ignorance and
factionalism which make it possible.  As I said, the main obstacle
to doing away with bigotry is the fact that modern statist societies
rely on alienating the masses against themselves to keep prevent
popular insurrection.

--
				Jim Wise
				System Administrator
				GSAPP, Columbia University
				jim@santafe.arch.columbia.edu
				http://www.arch.columbia.edu/~jim
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