[at-l] AT-L And The AT

[rhymworm@mindspring.com (rhymworm@mindspring.com)]

What I'd like to know is how far you propose to take it, Bucky. To the  crank letters department of the local newspaper? To the lockup for prisoners of conscience? To the bomb factory in the woodland cabin? You dodged that question again when I asked it last week, and huffed self-righteously that asking it was ridiculous.

Someone as bitter as you scares me. You can quote Thoreau all you want, but ultimately Thoreau said that while anarchy wasn't such a bad thing, for the time being he would work for a better government. And after his friends bailed him out of jail, he went huckleberrying. I'm not afraid of Thoreau. Should we be afraid of you? 

Pure anarchy? No government at all? Is that your solution? Do you really mean it, and all it entails, or is it just talk and posing and trolling? Be careful, now: the feds may be listening. Are you advocating doing violence to representatives of a government you consider illegitimate?

If so, you have some soulmates out there. Garry Wills, in "Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government," names a few of them:

"Much of what those groups [who trumpet the rhetoric of David Koresh, Randy Weaver of Ruby Ridge, and Oliver Stone] said was just the equivalent of the Jefferson tee shirt worn by Timothy McVeigh .... But the real victims of our fear [of government ] are not those faced with such extreme action -- not even the 168 people killed ... by McVeigh. The real victims are the millions of poor or shelterless or medically indigent who have been told, over the years, that they must lack care or life support in the name of their very own freedom. Better for them to starve than to be enslaved by 'big government.' That is the real cost of our anti-government values."

Yes, yes, I know. The A.T. is not the same as feeding the huddled masses. Or maybe it is. Benton MacKaye thought so, at least.

You see, that's the problem I have with all your fine idealism, delivered with such winning scorn and condescension: when people fall so in love with ideas that they don't see the human cost, they discredit those ideas. Who's really hurt here? A family doesn't get its asking price, but rather has to accept an appraiser's price, so that a beautiful place can be preserved--and therefore we should overthrow the government? Get real.

What do you propose instead?

--Rhymin' Worm 



Malcolm Fuller <mfuller@somtel.com> invoked the sainted Thoreau, who wrote:

>
"A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish
it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little
virtue in the action of masses of men."


_______________________________________________
AT-L mailing list
AT-L@mailman.backcountry.net
http://mailman.backcountry.net/mailman/listinfo/at-l