Tim, Since the post to which you originally agreed was no more specific than "foreign and domestic enemies", neither was your vaccination metaphor. The discussion WAS about government violence in general, and your argument WAS that a "vaccination" of a little of it was necessary to prevent MORE of it. But when I pointed out how yours was a poor metaphor because there is lots of government violence today, you changed your argument. Now you claim that you were only claiming that a "vaccination" of a little government violence is necessary to prevent a DICTATORSHIP. Since that's a much lower standard of proof, it doesn't take a genius to recognize your deceptive tactic. Anyone can go back and read your earlier posts for themselves and see that you're busted.
Now unless you are content with anything short of a complete dictatorship, can we get back to the original discussion about how to prevent the kind of government violence that exists in today's America (and ignore your elaborate distraction attempts)? ++++++++++++++++++++ > > > >Whether the disease is actually eliminated or only the symptoms > >eliminated, the principle is the same. > > Not at all. Your claim remains unproven, at best. "Most" > diseases are not treated by elimination, either of causes or > symptoms. In any case, this is just one big red herring. > > ------------------------ > If the point is not to eliminate diseases, then what is all of > healthcare and medicine? The goals of medicine are to increase quality and quantity of patient lifespan. Disease-elimination is just a means to that end. If that weren't true, then killing the patients would often be the most efficient way to eliminate diseases. >But we can dispense with this detail, because the core of your >analogy is ineffective. Read on. The "vaccination" of government >violence does NOT prevent the spread of further government violence. Yes it does, once you take regime types and severity of violence into account. Democracies are both less warlike and less democidal than dictatorships. That means that democracy acts as vaccine against dictatorship. >>...my comparison was between democracies and dictatorships. Second, >>what I said was that the former are much less likely to engage in >>war and democide than the latter. I never said that democracies >>didn't do those things, nor did I say they aren't violent in any >>other ways; they do, and they are. > >That appears to conflict with your first comment about >vaccinations. The conversation had questioned whether a criminal >protection racket (government) was a valid defense against >enemies "whether internal or external". Your reply had answered, >"yes, just as vaccination is a valid way to protect against more >virulent contagious diseases." Your vaccination analogy was >obviously not restricted to protection against dictatorships. I didn't specify the regime type because it's not an essential part of the argument. The point is that some regime types are better than others, and that the better types tend to protect against the worse types. This is not restricted to dictatorships, as it can even apply to different types of dictatorships. Some dictatorships are better than others, and the better ones can protect against the worse ones. >BTW, this also contradicts your current disagreement with Sasan's >"protection racket" analogy. Your original shows you agreed with >it... No, all it shows is that I accepted it for the sake of argument. The fact that I hadn't yet questioned it doesn't mean I agreed with it, and my argument in no way depends upon any agreement with it. >>(I guess virtually all of our complaints here on Libertarian are >>trivial, since we do not yet live under totalitarianism. > >Nice strawman. Have fun beating it up, & let me know when you're >ready to talk to me. > >--------------------- >Yes. I admitted it was a fallacy, in response to yours... Your mother never told you that two wrongs don't make a right? BTW, that would only be correct if I had made any fallacy for you to respond to. You are too hasty in your accusations of fallacies. Both your initial accusation and your response were strawmen; you made a strawman argument in response to your own strawman argument. Tim Starr Fight for Liberty! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fightforliberty/
