Re: "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail"

["Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>]

Rich Graves writes:
> On Thu, 25 Jan 1996, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> > I am a funny sort of person. I don't believe that governments should
> > be able to do anything that individuals cannot. If it is bad for me to
> > steal, it is also bad for a government official to steal. If it is bad
> > for me to listen in on my neighbor's phone calls, it is bad for the
> > government, too.
> 
> Er, I believe the above was clearly intended to mean "for one government
> to read another government's mail." 

I'm funny in more ways than one. I don't believe in the existence of
"Governments". 

I'm sure that most people seem to believe in this quasi-Divine Being,
of course. A lot of people seem to have constructed temples to some
Holy Being that they refer to as "The Government", made of marble and
steel and glass (often in the manner of temples constructed in ancient
times to Jove or Apollo). There are strange rites associated with the
worship and sustenance of this Divine Entity, such as the ritual
sacrifice of vast amounts of our wealth. There are a a bunch of people
that walk around in these temples, whom one might characterize as the
priests of this cult, and they are supposedly imbued with astonishing
extraordinary powers by virtue of association with this Divine Entity,
but when I glance at them I usually see only ordinary humans, with no
visible stigmata of their association with this extracorporeal Holy
Being worshiped by the body of the people.

In any case, we are here expected to believe that it is okay if the
Secular God of our land mass, our Government, spies on the Secular
Gods of other land masses. However, viewed from my perspective, when
"the Government" of our land listens in on "another Government's"
communications, from what I can tell what is happening is that
individual humans in the guise of High Priests converge at their
temple in Fort Meade for the purpose of listening in on conversations
between individuals humans elsewhere who are associated with other
Government cults in some sort of ordained capacity. One might argue
that this discourtesy between the followers of rival cults is not
something for we, the arch-atheists, to care about, but I must note
that in principle what is going on is the same -- people are listening
in on other people's communications -- not the Divine Governmental
Being itself listening in on the communications of other Divine
Governmental Beings. These Divine Governmental Beings don't
exist. Only the humans claiming the authority of the Divine
Governmental Beings exist.

So, in summary, if we believe that it is wrong for our fellow humans
to tap phones and listen in on the communications of other humans, I
see no reason to believe in an exception granted to some humans
associated with the Government Cult of our land mass to listen in on
humans associated with the Government Cult of another land mass.

> It is the ethical duty of a responsible government to read other 
> government's mail, absent any treaties or gentlemen's agreements to the 
> contrary.

This might be fine were there such a creature as a Holy Governmental
Being that wished to listen in on other Holy Governmental Beings, but
just as one never actually could prove the existance of the Capitoline
Jove in spite of the great temple that the Romans built to Him, so too
I find no evidence for the existance of the Holy Governmental Being in
spite of the fervor of the followers who have built the great marble
temples in the manner of the Romans all over Washington and other
provincial capitals throughout the Empire, pardon, the land mass we
call the United States.

Perry