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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (16556)	6/12/2001 3:21:55 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Are you planning to blow up the county courthouse?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (16556)	6/13/2001 6:11:53 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 82486

You have a point, but there are points on the other side too. I live in a country where building and zoning codes are either nonexistent or unenforced. People build where and how they please. Lots of times they do a poor job of it. Every year some of these buildings burn, some collapse in minor earthquakes, some are buried in mudslides or fall into valleys. People die. Sometimes other people die trying to rescue them. It's all very well to say it's your decision and you suffer for it, but if you make the wrong decision about your wiring and your house goes up in smoke, government employees are expected to risk their lives to save you and your property. If you build below an unstable bank and get buried, somebody has to dig you out. A lot of what you do on your property affects others. If you run your septic system into a creek, you foul water that others use. If you want a pond on your property, and build a dam, you may kill others if that dam breaks. All of these are, of course, extreme cases. But the line between what is safe and unsafe, acceptable and unacceptable, is seldom clearly drawn. There is a continuum between clearly unsafe and clearly safe, clearly acceptable and clearly unacceptable. For purposes of policy, though, a line has to be drawn, and the decision, especially in borderline cases, is likely to appear arbitrary. Those lines are drawn by elected officials or those accountable to them, and reflect the preferences of the community. If people think they are excessive - or insufficient - they can be changed. If you think the restrictions preferred by a given community are excessive, you can move to a community that imposes fewer restrictions. You can also organize people and try to change the policies. If enough people agree with you, you'll probably win. If people don't agree with you, you'll lose. Those restrictions can be a pain in the ass, but I don't see them as cause for ranting, and still less as cause for blowing anything up. We do have peaceful recourse in virtually every situation, and that makes violence unacceptable. We can always go to court. We may not always win, but it would be pretty childish to say we have the right to start shooting people if we don't get our way. It is ridiculous to claim that the Branch Davidians had no peaceful recourse - they rejected peaceful means when they shot at Federal agents, and paid the price. If you shoot at the cops, you get shot; everybody knows that. It is sick and tragic that they held their own children hostage, and caused their deaths, but that was their decision, not the Government's. If a commune of crack dealers shot at DEA agents, and their kids got killed in the subsequent Government assault, would anyone have blown up a Federal building in protest?