[at-l] (OT) AT-L And The AT

[mfuller@somtel.com (Malcolm Fuller)]

Rhymin' Worm wrote:

> 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? 

Wotta laugh. It's easy for you to not fear Thoreau because
he's dead. To gauge by your reaction to my posts, if Thoreau
were alive today you'd be loading your pants at some of his
writings. I have to wonder if you even know that late in his
life Thoreau had penned a passionately bitter essay in defense
of a *terrorist*, whose acts of violence shocked the nation
in its day at least as much as the bombing of the Murrah 
building had six years ago.

http://www.toptags.com/aama/books/book2.htm

I want you to read through Thoreau's essay, then come back
and tell us on what basis do you think I'll do anything other
than "go huckleberrying?"

> 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.

I don't believe that I've ever declared myself to be an
anarchist -- a minarchist who is flirting with anarcho-
capitalism perhaps, but not a full-blown anarchist. I can't
quite sign off on the concept of privatized justice, among
other things.

Regardless, I recommend that you learn a little about what
anarchy is before you comment further on it. You seem to be
mired in this Snidely Whiplashesque "hat-and-cloak wearing
fellow throwing a Stratego bomb" view of anarchy.

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/anarfaq.htm

> Are you advocating doing violence to representatives
> of a government you consider illegitimate?

Why do you persist with this lapse in logic that if I object
to government's use of violence (implied and otherwise) then
I must necessarily be advocating use of violence against
the government?

> What do you propose instead?

That people stop considering the lives and property of
others as theirs to dispose of, and instead respect 
individual rights. Most people do so in their private
dealings with others, so why is it so much to ask that
they do so in the realm of political participation?

I know, I know...because "that's different."

  "Having deviated thus far into negativity, Mr. Propter
was led on, through a continuing failure of vigilance, into
an even less profitable preoccupation with the concrete and
particular miseries of the day. He remembered his interview
that morning, with Hansen, who was the agent for Jo Stoyte's
estates in the valley. Hansen's treatment of the migrants
who came to pick the fruit was worse than the average. He
had taken advantage of their number and their desperate 
need to force down wages. In the groves he managed, young
children were being made to work all day in the sun at the
rate of two or three cents an hour. And when the day's work
was finished, the homes to which they returned were a row
of verminous sties in the waste land beside the bed of the
river. For these sties, Hansen was charging a rent of ten
dollars a month. Ten dollars a month for the privilege of
freezing or suffocating; of sleeping in a filthy promis-
cuity; of being eaten up by bed bugs and lice; of picking
up ophthalmia and perhaps hookworm and amoebic dysentery.
And yet Hansen was a very decent, kindly man. One who would
be shocked and indignant if he saw you hurting a dog; one
who would fly to the protection of a maltreated woman or
a crying child. When Mr. Propter drew this fact to his 
attention, Hansen had flushed darkly with anger.
  "'That's different,' he had said.
  "Mr. Propter had tried to find out why it was different.
  "It was his duty, Hansen had said.
  "But how could it be his duty to treat children worse
than slaves and inoculate them with hookworm?
  "It was his duty to the estates. He wasn't doing anything
for himself.
  "But why should doing wrong for someone else be different
from doing wrong on your own behalf? The results were
exactly the same in either case. The victims didn't suffer
any less when you were doing your duty than when you were
acting in what you imagined might be your own interest.
  "This time the anger had exploded in violent abuse. It
was the anger, Mr. Propter had perceived, of the well-
meaning but stupid man who is compelled against his will
to ask himself indiscreet questions about what he has
been doing as a matter of course. He doesn't want to ask
these questions because he knows that if he does he will
be forced either to go on with what he is doing, but with
a cynic's awareness that he is doing wrong, or else, if he
doesn't want to be a cynic, to change the entire pattern
of his life so as to bring his desire to do right into
harmony with the real facts as revealed in the course of
self-interrogation. To most people radical change is even
more odious than cynicism. The only way between the horns
of the dilemma is to persist at all costs in the ignorance
which permits one to go on doing wrong in the comforting
belief that by doing so one is accomplishing one's duty --
one's duty to the company, to the shareholders, to the
family, the city, the state, the fatherland, the Church.
For, of course, poor Hansen's case wasn't in any way 
unique; on a smaller scale and therefore with less power
to do evil, he was acting like all those civil servants
and statesmen and prelates, who go through life, spreading
misery and destruction, in the name of their ideals and
under orders from their categorical imperatives.
  "Well, he hadn't got very far with Hansen, Mr. Propter
sadly concluded. He'd have to try again with Jo Stoyte.
In the past, Jo had always refused to listen, on the
ground that the estates were Hansen's business. The alibi
was so convenient that it would be hard, he foresaw, to
break it down."

-- from Aldous Huxley (1939), After Many a Summer Dies
the Swan.

See also the quotation in my post to Weary.

-MF