From: Blanc <blancw@cnw.com>
Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 04:57:40 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Wine Politics Again!
Message-ID: <3.0.32.19970510133401.006ce484@cnw.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>From frissell@panix.com:

>At 12:35 AM 5/10/97 -0700, Blanc wrote:

>>Timothy must be drunk; I can't believe he said this.   Because he wouldn't
>>spend so much time writing sensible things of Truth & Light, if he thought
>>the better thing to do for achieving libertarian values was to kill so
>>indiscriminately with a bomb.    After all, he subscribes to utmost
>>discrimination.   So I think right now he's less in the engagement of
>>Reason and more under the influence of maybe some Bud Light.
>
>He didn't say it was a better thing to do.  He said he was coming to
understand McVeigh's actions.
.................................................................


He didn't explicity say it was the better thing to do.    But when there is
a decision to be made about a course of action to take, and there are
choices available and you select one over another,  you have evidenced
which one you think is the better.

>Tim is helping (in his way) to convince others of the facts of the matter.
 Dramatic statements carry the message better.

Lately Tim has been making extremely dramatic death statements:   "Kill
them all...they are unworthy of life.", "... I
pray for the deaths of these criminals.",  "Washington is a cancer than can
only be cured with a few megatons of
nuclear disinfectant.", "May they all be vaporized.", etc.  

These are definitely dark in mood and understandable; I also have violently
negative & despairing emotions about these people.   I just wouldn't ever
think of involving those who are innocent bystanders and happened to be in
the wrong place at the wrong time.

This is the same kind of flaw which collectivists make when they set up
groups, governments, any kind of organization: they take a broad sweep of
the population, without being particular about any exceptions to their
rules or their plans.

It has always been the defining element in what is different about the U.S.
from other countries, that individuals receive more attention and
recognition as single entities, with their own defining characteristics,
than anywhere else in the world.   We are more free to descriminate, to
think of people as responsible for their own actions and as deserving of
just consequences for them.   It muddies this concept, to lump a large
aggregate of people into one and treat them all as being the same entity;
it takes the mind from being able to think in terms of specifics, into
thinking instead in broad considerations which overlook the particulars. 

Technology delivers to the single person the possibility of efficacy on
their level, as compared to having to wait for some overseeing body of
authorities to deliver solutions from their stock of tools & means.
Technology also makes it possible to be even more precise about cause &
effect - so that the tools one uses can be of benefit only to the user
without affecting anyone else who is not interested in participating, or in
being affected by, what anyone else may be doing.

I know that critical times call for critical action, but I just don't
expect from anarchist libertarian cypherpunks that they would "throw
caution to the wind" (so to speak) and forget how to think about events and
actions in terms of specifics and utter precision.   

    ..
Blanc
    ..
Blanc