>At 18:10 -0700 7/21/00, Ernest Hua wrote: > >Will you step up and say it's wrong, when the >first harassing phone call is made? the first egg >is throw at their respective houses? the first >bullet fired through a window? Where do you draw >the line? I draw the line like this: There is no "guilt by association" in a free country: I am not responsible for the crimes or actions of others unless I paid them to do something, forced them to do it, or otherwise coerced or contracted with them. Not even my words of "persuasion" should count as "causing" others to do things. (The experts will point to a "nexus" of actions, bounded in time. A speaker at a rally who "incites" violence _may_ be liable, though not all experts and libertarians and such would agree even with this. But someone who writes a book is probably not morally or legally liable for actions taken months or years later. And of course someone who merely belongs to a club or church is not at all responsible for the actions of others.) The notion that those who don't "speak out against" or "condemn" or "repudiate" are somehow culpable is in the worst tradition of statism. Both Ernest and Reese are seriously confused about the foundations of liberty and freedom. They haven't even assimilated the basics. This echoes the confusion we see in others about "privacy laws," "data base laws," and, even more often, in economic matters. Some years ago I would have said that "we have our work cut out for us," in terms of educating these folks in issues of rights, liberties, and basic economics. The last several years, however, I have given up caring. I think of their foolish notions as part of the Great Chain of Being, as being the way the ash heaps of history are fed with the corpses of the ignorant. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
