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Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

1997-06-06 - Re: Bell/Vulis Ranters (Was: Re: McVeigh)

Header Data

From: Mac Norton <mnorton@cavern.uark.edu>
To: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Message Hash: 65228d38daa39ba3350cf09d477f7c9a9d7b83abdb528b79626bb7d1f84d81ff
Message ID: <Pine.SOL.3.96.970605235724.23963A-100000@cavern.uark.edu>
Reply To: <3.0.1.32.19970605173645.007431f0@popd.ix.netcom.com>
UTC Datetime: 1997-06-06 06:05:54 UTC
Raw Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 14:05:54 +0800

Raw message

From: Mac Norton <mnorton@cavern.uark.edu>
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 14:05:54 +0800
To: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Bell/Vulis Ranters (Was: Re: McVeigh)
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970605173645.007431f0@popd.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.96.970605235724.23963A-100000@cavern.uark.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



On Thu, 5 Jun 1997, Bill Stewart wrote:

> Bell's point that government would be much better behaved if the individuals
> in government could be held individually and personally responsible
> for their actions is certainly valid.  Whether shooting them is an 
> appropriate way to hold them responsible is another discussion (:-).

That was the Founding Fathers' point in instituting direct election
of House members every two years. Bell's point, if it was the 
same, entailed murder.  It's not another discusion of ends. It's
a discussion of means, and his means border on the insane.  That
alone doesn't make his idea criminal in a society with a First
Amendment, but the fact that he had an end in common with other
political thinkers doesn't make his means legitimate.

In other words, Bell's point, as you describe it, has nothing
original to say about ends. It's all about means, and as such
it's pretty well whacko. 

MacN

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