[Gllug] Editors

[William Palfreman]

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Tom Gilbert wrote:

> > effort to look after your kids properly. The same goes for censorship,
> > and all the other "special cases". As Jefferson(?) said, the price of
> > freedom is eternal vigilance. If you are not happy with that, find a
> > dictatorship where the ruling caste has an ideology that matches your
> > own, and enjoy....
> 
> Your argument can also be taken to an extreme. 

Any argument can be made to look wrong if taken to extreme:  one should
not give up eating simply because over eating can kill, nor should one
over-eat because those who don't eat die.  Similarly wanting live in a
free society, where people are responsible for their own children, and not
wanting random things (paedophilia, terrorists, whatever) absolutely
nothing to do with you to deprive you of pretty well all your civil
rights, does not mean you want to rape people or steal cars.  Anyone who
thinks that a belief in civil liberties makes you a car-stealing rapist
has a lot of convincing to do.


> After all, a totally free
> society is one where you are truly free to do what you want. E.g. blow
> someone's head off because their loud hawiian shirt offends you, or
> steal someone's car because it looks nice or rape someone because they
> look nice. I would not want to live in such a society and I strongly
> believe that giving away some _small_ amount of personal freedom is
> justified when the benefit is safety, security and peace of mind.
> 
> But it's pointless arguing, you feel what you feel :)

Never raped anyone, never stolen a car, and my piece of mind has gone down
a lot since a bunch of people nothing to do with me took away my rights to
silence and non-incrimination, "tipping off" (spit spit) and all, just
because *they* think that *my* freedom is a small price to pay for
whatever the hell makes them feel good about themselves today.


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