From: Fisher Mark <FisherM@exch1.indy.tce.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 21:43:34 +0800
To: "'cypherpunks'" <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>
Subject: RE: Br'er Tim and the Bug Hole
Message-ID: <2328C77FF9F2D011AE970000F84104A7493430@indyexch_fddi.indy.tce.com>
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Bob Hettinga wrote:
>Frankly, waving your Glock at the local sherriff and daring him to come
>shoot you out of der MayBunker is not just free speech, it's,
charitably,
>grandstanding. Making a threat on the life of a judge, or even begging
for
>Washington to be nuked -- something you can't possibly do yourself --
is in
>the same catagory of "will someone rid me of this priest",  or "but
that
>would be wrong", or the Castro assination exhortations which inspired
Oswald
>to kill JFK. In this country, it's all free speech, but that doesn't
keep
>you from getting impaled, "accidentally" or otherwise, on the pointy
end of
>the state, or public opinion, when you piss it off.

I think you are falling into the "map _is_ the territory" mistake here,
Bob.  Tim is just speaking his mind, lucidly and forcefully as usual.
(The same way you do, which is why I enjoy reading both your posts so
much, although your prose styles differ so greatly.)  Tim isn't "waving
your Glock at the local sherriff" -- he is talking about his actions if
law enforcement decides to violate the Constitution personally upon him.
Although it is certainly the case that all rights, at their boundaries,
may be observed more in the breech, I don't think the situation is so
bad _yet_ that Tim has to lay awake nights worrying about a no-knock.

Tim, I guess I see you as someone who has spotted a bunch of
thunderclouds on the horizon, so you have decided to stock up on
raingear before the deluge.  But, with a little luck and a lot of common
sense on the part of the populace, neither Tim nor anyone else will have
to go through that particular hell.  As one additional datapoint, when
our local "FAX Daily" (a daily FAXed paper) took a poll on GAK, 66% were
against government access to keys (and "FAX Daily" is aimed at the
general population).  (I have this suspicion that California is more
likely to develop "thunderclouds on the horizon" that don't turn into
local storms, due to the greater concentration of Democratic Party
members there -- Indiana, as a Republican state, certainly sees a lot of
posturing about family values and such, but with Republican
anti-government rhetoric, it is hard for Republicans to push too hard
for the massive increases of government regulation that would be
required to actually enforce family values by governmental fiat.)

Tim, from what I understand of what he said, is just getting prepared if
the worst comes.  One of the functions of this list as I see it is just
this sort of preparation, which can often stave off the actual worst.
If those who would desire this sort of power over the population are
made aware that the population won't stand for it, they are less likely
to continue to seek that level of power.


To close with a quote that I think (from my Midwest perception of the
situation) describes best how the near-term will actually work out:
"There's no way the federal government could oppress the citizens,
because
the populace is armed to the teeth, and the officials would just get
their
heads blown off."
   -- James Madison argues the pro-government position, Federalist
Papers #46
==========================================================
Mark Leighton Fisher          Thomson Consumer Electronics
fisherm@indy.tce.com          Indianapolis, IN
"Their walls are built of cannon balls, their motto is
'Don't Tread on Me'"