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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (22877)	4/21/1999 8:02:00 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

It's one of those things that doesn't seem to have been thought out very well, by me, or by others, as far as I can tell. I am a libertarian, one of the things we used to talk about a lot when I was active in the Libertarian party, was "what is the proper role of government"? Because libertarians believe in limited government, and in only delegating such roles to government as cannot be performed in the private sector. Libertarians also believe that no one has the right to initiate force or fraud against another, and thus, a proper function for government is the police power, and the protection of our borders. Stuff like that. I could make a case for protecting the citizens of other nations against force and fraud, but it might be sophistry. I'd feel better if I could debate it with someone ideologically pure, or if I read essays on it, and was still of the same mind afterwards. I analogize it to the fact that one has the right to use deadly force to protect others from deadly force, even if the one you are protecting isn't someone you know. One someone else initiates the use of deadly force, he forfeits all rights (well, he would still have the right to due process, and the Geneva convention, stuff like that, but he doesn't have the right to demand a fair trial before he's shot down like a dog, unless he drops his weapons and surrenders.)

To: Rambi who wrote (22877)	4/21/1999 11:20:00 PM
From: JF Quinnelly	Respond to of 71178

I think this "Policeman of the World" idea is sheer idiocy. Dangerous. Foolish. We are about 5% of the world's populace. We haven't unlimited manpower or money. There are ugly, brutal wars going on all over the globe. The Sudan makes Yugoslavia pale by comparison, but there's no video to make Americans queasy. There's ethnic war in East Timor. War in Indonesia. Our good pals the mainland Chinese have been "ethnic cleansing" Tibet since 1959. Clinton has presided over the largest draw-down in military power since WWII, while increasing our commitments at a record pace. We have troops in more countries today than at any time since the end of WWII. We better quit squandering the assets we do have, or a real adversary is going to challenge us somewhere that it counts.