Re: Br'er Tim and the Bug Hole

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

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At 7:45 pm -0500 on 11/11/97, Monty wrote:

> As Michel Foucault used to say, "The only guarantee of freedom is
> freedom itself."

The world's foremost pseudomystical relativist cited to support an
absolutist position. The logic escapes me. But then, logic, much less
independent thinking, was never Foucault's strong point.

>  Put another way, "rights which are not exercised are
> lost."

True enough, but it doesn't follow from your Foucault quote very much.
Besides, I'd rather say "because it can be done, it will be done."
Especially if it's better.

Freedom gives you all kinds of benefits you don't get from totalitarianism,
including a more robust economy, and thus, the society it's founded on.

Yeah, I know. It smacks of utilitarian determinism, even, horrors, logical
positivism. So, um, shoot me, okay? :-). On second thought, don't. I'm not
the guy asking for a no-knock around here...

> We don't see Freeh and Reno backing off so they don't become
> poster children for cryptoanarchy, do we?

No, but that's not the point people are making about Tim. If you see a pride
of lions before they see you, it's probably a good idea to give them a
little room. It's not usually a good idea to walk up to them unarmed, and
scold them for being carnivorous. And, frankly, Tim's arsenal, against a
good entry team, is the equivalent of facing that entry team unarmed.
Shooting them only makes them mad.

However, to continue the above analogy, I know not why :-), if you're just
waiting for a Land Rover to come by, so you can get closer without the lions
eating you, I, personally, would call that prudent. Once ensconced in
Leyland's Finest, you can scold your lions all you want, because the
technology protects your foolishness.

So, by the same token, I would also say that if you're going to threaten a
federal judge with death on a public email list, it might behoove you to use
a nym and a remailer. Like you do, Monty. Using a nym and a remailer, I
mean, not threatening a federal judge. :-).

> Just because free speech is a right guaranteed under the Constitution
> does not mean that is necessarily a safe right to exercise.  Let us
> hope that Tim does not come to harm.  But, let us also give him the
> credit he deserves for having the courage to speak his mind.

Yes. Fine. Tim has courage. God bless him. Hope he enjoys his firefight. May
the laser sights of his enemies never stay long enough on his motor cortex
to get a clean shot off. Etcetera.

> I've been reading about a newspaper called the "Aurora" which operated
> in the 1790s from Philadelphia.

Yes. I read it too, when it came out. Franklin was my favorite patriot.
Aurora was founded by his grandson(?), if I remember. The one who went with
Franklin to Paris, as a kid, right?

> It made itself very unpopular with
> Washington by claiming he was not the "Father of the Country".  It
> made itself doubly unpopular with Adams for other less than
> respectful, but astute, observations.

Right. And then Adams passed the Alien and Sedition laws. And then the
Supreme court took him out. Game over.

> People said exactly the same things that Hettinga is saying here.

First of all, let's clear the air about this right now. The bit where I
said,

> >I mean, Tim, I have to admit I'm just as nervous as the next guy
> >about being next to soft targets these days,

is not me saying that I'm afraid that Tim is going to get us all sent to
Auschwitz-on-the-Patomac, or something. Far from it. It means exactly what I
said. That the situation *does* seem politically unstable at the moment.
Well, technologically unstable, anyway, with the rumored availabilty of
suitcase nukes, and a jumpy bunch of Feds almost hoping it's so, so they'll
have a few years more of the Cold War ricebowl to last them 'till
retirement. Winn Schwartau and the "InfoWar" boys are good examples of this
kind of dreck.

To return to the point, my actual concern, if you can call it that at this
point after so much haggling about it, is this now marginal feeling I have
that Tim's going to go piss on some cop's shoes and find himself with a 9
millimeter lobotomy one day. It, frankly, makes me feel sad. Tim's very
smart guy, and I've learned a lot from him, as I expect most people on this
list have.

All that, coupled with the "Final Days" pseudomillenial, well, literally,
FUD, that seems to pervade this list lately, finally brought me to my feet
out of lurker mode to call a spade a spade: The emperor, ladies and
gentleman, has no clothes. The sky isn't falling. The martians aren't
coming, and, face it, folks, the revolution ain't comin' at sunrise
tomorrow, romantic though it may be to believe. We aren't even going to have
Bosnia on the Bay next *week*, even if some people *do* want a little more
challenge in their lives than they're currently getting. :-). At the very
worst, all we're going to get is Tim and his local federales playing king of
the hill, probably with a resultant sinecure for a bunch of defense lawyers
and prosecutors. The irony of Tim, the putative anarchist, shooting his hard
earned asset wad on a bunch of lawyers is a sad one, to say the least.

> If
> they would only behave (i.e., go along with anything), then they
> wouldn't have to be censored.

Hogwash. What the conventional wisdom held, back in the 1790's, was a bunch
of neoaristocratic justifications for the devine rights of the state,
reminiscent of the devine rights of kings, and that George Washington, as
the victor of the revolutionary war, deserved as much power as he wanted.
(Sounds an awful lot like Napoleon, a generation later, who inherited a
similar post-revolutionary society, but one without any prior democratic
traditions.) By their logic, Adams, as his successor, was due the same power
that Washington "abdicated" when he stepped down after his second term.

Fortunately, a certain "nym" named Publius advocated the separation of
powers in the constitution, which created a supreme court, which used
Jefferson's Bill of Rights to shut all that crap down before it went too
far, modulo a little jail time for those who crash-tested the idea. Frankly,
the fact that the constitutional convention *voted* for the Bill of Rights,
or that the Continental Congress voted for the Declaration of Independence
before that, said more about the efficacy of 150 years of prexisting
decentralized personal autonomy in America than it ever did about
Jefferson's euclidean derivation of the rights of man, duly voted on and
approved in Philadelphia.

And, as I've said in another post in this thread, that's the point. The
technological conditions are right again, this time for the kind of
devolution from central authority that we had at the time of the American
revolution, but, instead of the formation of smaller nation-states, or even
Somolian clan warfare on the streets of Cupertino :-), I think that most
industrialized countries will just continue see the further replacement of
government control with economic forces. More freedom, in other words, all
because of the collapse in the price of information processing. The nation
state will become more ceremonial, not more dictatorial.

> Even though the editors were attacked and beaten, imprisoned, and
> charged with Federal crimes, they persevered.  It would not be
> unreasonable to say that Jefferson owed his Presidency to their
> efforts.  Indeed, it would not be too much to say that the
> Constitution (which failed to protect them) might not have survived
> without their efforts.

Really? Exactly how were they released then, when the Alien and Sedition
Acts were found unconstitional?

Again, I find the result more a function of the economics -- and not the
mysticism -- of freedom, than anything else. To be viciously blunt, here,
people live longer, and make more money, when they're free. That's why we
have freedom now. The cost of anything is the foregone alternative. When you
have a free society you forego misery. :-). I love progress.

> A few courageous people doing the right thing at the right time make a
> big difference.  This does not happen by kowtowing to whichever
> malfeasant tyrant happens to be in power.  When you are asked to wear
> a yellow star, you can be pretty sure that doing so will not save you.
>
> Also, let us not pretend that Tim's gun collection is much protection.
> It may delay capture or raise the price of execution of a no-knock
> warrant, but if the Powers That Be don't want Tim around, then he's
> gone.  It could be a "lone nut" with a sniper rifle, it could be a
> "heart attack", it could be a rock star's plane "accidently" hitting
> the house: there are many ways to take care of troublemakers.

Wow. Not a dry eye in the house. Here. Have a hankie, yourself.

Very eloquent, Monty, but it's still just mystical thinking.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

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-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/
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