🚀 go-pugleaf

jgadams@leland.Stanford.EDU (Joseph G. Adams) wrote:


>Bill Watts <wwatts@nothinbut.net> wrote:

>>Individual liberty as garunteed in our constitution sets forth the
>>right for me to live how I wish so long as it does not interfere with
>>your, or anyone else's rights to do the same. 

>This is surely wrong.

>A number of Constitutional provisions empower Congress to restrict
>your liberty, even if you aren't interfering with anyone else.

>For example, Art. I, s. 8 allows Congress to impose taxes, regulate
>interstate commerce, and raise armies.  All of these powers may 
>infringe on your right to live the way that you wish.

And now, Joseph, you have explicitly described the evidence that we are NOT a
truly civilized nation -- we are simply a nation that has created what is, to
date, the most sophisticated system of gang warfare in human history.  ANY
government that initiates force against harmless individuals FOR ANY REASON --
intantly evicts itself from the realm of civilized behavior.  If this is NOT
true, then the word "civilized"  has no useful purpose except to obfuscate for
political gain.  Freedom from force for harmless individuals was the very
reason why men agreed to form governments in the first place.

After all our centuries of struggle, we are STILL, just a bunch of upper
paleolithic hunter-gatherer tribes.  The main difference between today and 20k
years ago is our intellectual capacity to invent euphemisms (lies by
distortion of reality) for what used to be honestly called "rape, pillage and
plunder".

Happy new year Joseph!

--Mike

--Mike
"Capitalism does not tell men to suffer, but to pursue enjoyment and 
achievement, here, on earth - capitalism does not tell men to serve and 
sacrifice, but to produce and profit - capitalism does not preach 
passivity, humility, resignation, but independence, self-confidence, 
self-reliance - and, above all, capitalism does not permit anyone  
...to take the unearned" - Ayn Rand

"Altruism holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that 
service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that 
self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue, and value." - Ayn Rand

Capitalism vs. Altruism = 
Freedom vs. Slavery