Dear Chris;
In your response you wrote:
Arguably not. However, there�s also a common-law doctrine of reasonable
force; if someone spits on you or shoves you, shooting them is considered
an unreasonable response.
Tell this to the London cops who flat out murdered that poor guy on the tram because he "looked" like a terrorist and then they didn't even have the guts to apologize for the mistake.
The other problem is how long before this happens to some person who gets profiled for a "no probable cause bag search" by the NYPD on the subway and gets murdered because he looked like a terrorist?
Ron Getty SF Libertarian
"Christopher R. Maden" <crism@...> wrote:
Justin Sampson wrote:
I like the pledge precisely because it gets you thinking about
principles when joining the Party.
Likewise.
On the other hand, I also see "initiation" as a weasel word.
Every thug in history says the other guy started it.
That is a bit of a problem, but I don�t see a good solution to it.
Advocating or refusing to advocate initiation of force is a position, a
stand, a principle. Who initiated force in a particular situation is a
matter of fact or opinion, situationally. But the very fact that so many
thugs feel a need to claim that the other guy started it speaks to the
power of this principle, which I think makes it one of our selling points.
Taxation is an act of force. So would violent revolution in
response to taxation be an "initiation" of force, or not?
Arguably not. However, there�s also a common-law doctrine of reasonable
force; if someone spits on you or shoves you, shooting them is considered
an unreasonable response. One still has (at least in theory) the option
of lobbying for changes to the tax laws, or of running for office to
implement such changes. Moreover, a violent revolution is likely to
direct force against many people not involved with taxation, even
peripherally, and so is inappropriate. And pragmatically, it would be
unsuccessful, currently; taxation is not a hot enough issue to rally the
people.
(As I�ve said before, one of the things I like most about libertarianism
is that the moral and pragmatic outlooks so often coincide. The left and
right suffer so much cognitive dissonance on that score that I really
wonder how so many people can support them for so long.)
~Chris