Re: Br'er Tim and the Bug Hole

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

At 5:43 pm -0500 on 11/13/97, Monty wrote:

> Are you asking me to use Foucault's line without giving him credit?
> That doesn't seem right to me.

This is a red herring. What I said about Foucault having a single right
opinion out of an otherwise ungainly pile of dreck has nothing to do with
whether or not you should cite him as an influence.


> BTW, how much of Foucault have you actually read?  I am generally
> unfamiliar with his work, but I have a sinking feeling the same can be
> said for certain of his critics.

Frankly, with most philosophers, you have to spend so much time reading and
rereading what they say (Kant is a good example) that you have to choose
who you read a little better than that. That is, life is too short to read
some philosophers. :-).

I suggest that you read Foucault's actual philosophical works yourself,
instead of his for-public-consumption essays, and see how far you get
before throwing it against the wall. Most of my opinions about Foucault are
from people, like, say Bloom, who say Foucault and the whole crop of French
"Resenters" are a waste of time. If you don't like my use of secondary
sources, get over it. I read what interests me, just like you do.

> >> It seems to me that Tim said "The judge in the Paladin case
> >> committed a capital crime" and not "The judge in the Paladin case
> >> committed a capital crime and should be gunned down in the streets
> >> like a dog."
> >
> >Frankly, I believe that the two sentences above are exactly the same
> >thing,...
>
> No, in the first case the possibility of a fair trial with an
> impartial jury exists.  They are different statements.

Agree to disagree then. I say you're splitting, um, doghairs at best.

> >...but that it was pretty apparently a wish (if not a threat, if you
> >want to pull semantic hairs until one bleeds) that the judge be
> >assassinated,...
>
> Tim has repeatedly made it clear to the world that this was not his
> meaning.  What is your purpose in declaring otherwise?

Tim can make it as "repeatedly clear" as he wants after the fact. However,
he has, on several occasions, made threats against people with more guns
than he has, and, sooner or later, they're gonna squash him, and his aims
won't be any farther along than they were before he decided that he was
some kind of freedom fighter in defense of our rights. To take a page from
his book, I didn't ask him to.

Frankly, I really liked him a lot better when he made sense.

> In every other instance in which Tim has discussed capital punishment,
> it has been in the context of a trial.

I think other people have answered this, and the next few things you've
said this post of yours, much better than I have.

However, Monty, you're just being an apologist for someone used to make
sense about how the world works, who still has his moments of lucidity, but
who has gotten increasingly radicalized and militant at exactly the same
time the world is figuring out that his earlier thinking on freedom, on
cryptography, on the net, and on a whole host of other really important
stuff, was right.

It's almost as if Tim keeps trying to top himself, with some newer and more
grandiose claim about the impending collapse of the world as we know it. It
just ain't so. The world don't work that way.

> >And, Monty, here's another fact: the world isn't going to end on
> >Thanksgiving Day, much less at the beginning of the millennium. Armed
> >storm troopers are probably *not* going to decend on the denizens of
> >this list and haul them off to newly built gulags in the Rockies
> >somewhere, or whatever the current fantasy of the moment is.
>
> When you drive do you always wear your seat belt, or just when you are
> going to have an accident?

Another red herring. Of course, people should educate themselves about
freedom, and know how to use the tools of freedom, including firearms, and,
now, cryptography. That lots of people don't know how to, is of course, a
drag, if not evolution in action.

However, to say that they're coming to take us all away on Thanksgiving, or
anytime soon, is more than a little paranoid, and, to attempt to force a
confrontation in hopes of preciptating a revolution, or even gratuitous
publicity :-), is, frankly, the act of a loon. As Rocky said to Bullwinkle,
"Aw, that trick never works!"

> Incidentally, it is well documented that in the 1980s, the USG had
> detailed plans for mass arrests of dissident citizens.  Ten army camps
> had been selected for this purpose.  The plan was to be executed in
> the event the country invaded Nicaragua.  The USG has incarcerated
> masses of U.S. citizens without trial at least twice during the 20th
> century.

Cool. Why don't you point me to the sources on this one, Monty. Let's see,
two independent sources who same thing should be enough. Ones that don't
quote each other would be preferrable. :-)

Oh, Monty? Don't give me that tired old crap about media conspiracy,
either. That trick never works, either...

> To claim it cannot happen again seems a little naive.

Prove to me it didn't happen?  Wait, there's a list of informal fallacies
around here somewhere. Want a copy. :-).

> >> The book I am reading is called "The Aurora: A Democratic-Republican
> >> Returns" by Richard N. Rosenfeld.
> >
> >Okay. Here's where I cop to bad craziness. It's now time for me to
> >fess up and get my butt hammered like a gentleman. :-).
>
> You certainly take your medicine like a man.  Good.

And your gloating condecention is *manly*? Sheesh...


> Hamilton wrote 51 of the essays, Madison 26, Jay 5, and 3 were written
> jointly by Madison and Hamilton.

Well, spank me dry. That's what I get for having a public eduction, I
guess. Here I thought all along Madison knew what he was talking about,
with that constitution stuff. Clearly the entire constitution is actually
Hamilton's fault. :-).

> If you are saying he attempted to subvert the Constitution, this
> letter will be of interest.  (May 20, 1798 Madison to Jefferson):
>
> >The Alien bill proposed in the Senate is a monster that must forever
> >disgrace its parents.  I should not have supposed it possible that
> >such a one could have been engendered in either House & still
> >persuade myself that it cannot be fathered by both... These addresses
> >to the feelings of the people from their enemies may have more effect
> >in opening their eyes than all the arguments addressed to their
> >understandings by their friends.  The President also seems to be
> >co-operating for the same purpose.  Every answer he gives to his
> >addressers unmasks more and more his principles & views.  His
> >language to the young men at Ph[iladelphia] is the most abominable &
> >degrading that could fall from the lips of the first magistrate of an
> >independent people...  It throws some light on his meaning when he
> >remarked to me "that there was not a single principle the same in the
> >American & French Revolutions;"... the abolition of Royalty was, it
> >seems, not one of his Revolutionary principles...

That's nice, Monty. Your cite is 9 years after Jefferson and Madison
corresponded during the constitutional convention about the bill of rights,
however, and, as far as your quote above, I see nothing there about Madison
himself subverting the constitution, though I'll take your word for it.

But, Monty, be careful, you're pushing fair use, here. Might as well copy
the whole book to us, or something. :-) So, exactly how much *do* you make
on commission at Amazon for copies of "Aurora"? ;-).

> >I believe, if you check it out, that
> >Jefferson sent the Bill of Rights to the Constitutional Convention
> >from France, and that Madison, ironically enough, had a hand in
> >getting it passed.
>
> Perhaps it is your turn to crack open a book and find the reference.
> I would be quite interested (and surprised) if you can substantiate
> your claim.

This is rich, from someone who gets such enormous mileage from just one
book. So, just for fun, I popped into AltaVista (not even the world's
greatest search engine anymore, how the mighty have fallen; I like Dogpile,
at the moment) and gave it "Jefferson wrote the bill of rights" and got
this back:

http://archon.educ.kent.edu/Oasis/Resc/Educ/teach2.html , which of course
only has one sentence about Jefferson and the bill of rights. :-). I leave
permutations and combinations of the search terms to the student as an
exercise.

>From the looks of the above citation, the principle of conservation of
irony still holds, I see...

Meanwhile, oddly enough, I *do* trust the author of the URL's source on the
subject. Unless, of course, he/she/it forgot to read "History Your Mother
Never Taught You", or something...

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

-----------------
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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