Re: "Deterrence"

["Robert A. Rosenberg" <hal9001@panix.com>]

At 19:17 12/29/95, jim bell wrote:

>In my essay, "Assassination Politics," I pointed out that it would be
>relatively easy to deter such official-type actions if enough of us simply
>said, "NO!" and denominated it in terms of dollars and cents.  After all,
>with four million Compuserve users, if they each were willing to donate a
>penny to see this latter-day Fuhrer dead, that would be $40,000.  (Pardon me
>if I don't translate this into marks and other currencies.)
[snip]
>WHEN, exactly, would it be appropriate to act?

This reminds me of a Science Fiction story by H. Beam Piper called "A
Planet for Texans" where as part of the laws of the planet (and the oath of
office) was a statement that the politician was representing the interests
of ALL of their constituents. Every constituent had the legal right (and
duty) to register any protests of the politician's actions _in-person_ with
said politician. Such protest could take any form up-to-and-including
killing the SOB on the spot. In the story, this right was illustrated by a
small farmer being charged will killing a Senator by hacking him to death
with a machete (all legal protests are required to be registered in person
and use of long range techniques such as car-bombs or snipping with rifles
is not regarded as a valid protest) and we are shown his trial. The charge
is not killing the Senator (which is by law the farmer's right since he
felt that the Senator was violating his oath of office by misrepresenting
him) but whether, in exercising this right, he used excessive force out of
proportion to the actions that was being protested.