Re: and this is from, um, an e.u. member

begin  Tim Jansen's  quote:

| What kind of freedom is "you are free, but only as long as you
| don't act against our interests"?

i'm trying to think of the country that has no problem with residents 
of that country acting to bring down that country. i cannot find one 
that exists or ever existed. this does not surprise me. what does 
surprise me is that anyone would find this unusual or wrong.

it then comes down to matters of degree, where the line is drawn, what 
constitutes acting to bring down the country. countries draw that 
line in different places. some will countenance no criticism at all 
of the government. others allow just about anything short of 
preaching violent insurrection. in american history, there are two 
large examples and one small one: the american revolution, which was 
certainly treason against great britain, the civil war, which was 
certainly treason against the united states, and some of the events 
of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which by most standards would also 
be thought treasonous against the u.s. -- not the demonstrations and 
the like, but the seizure and bombing of buildings, the various 
murders committed in the name of radical factions (more often than 
not the result of internicene fighting over the purity of their, for 
instance, maoism). that those went largely unpunished (though i 
suppose kathy boudin, who gets out next year, might disagree). this 
in turn set a standard by which people believe that violence or the 
advocacy thereof is okay, so long as there is some idea, harebrained 
or not, behind it -- some cause other than personal enrichment, or at 
least appearing to be other than personal enrichment. (if the things 
that the hook-handed cleric advocates were to come to pass, he'd 
certainly end up better off for it, from a very narrow perspective.)

there is no escaping motivation. that which is done to further a good 
purpose is better than that which is done to further an evil purpose, 
even if the two actions are otherwise identical. that is a very 
unpopular thing to say in a time of utter moral relativism, though 
anyone thinking much about it is forced to the conclusion that moral 
relativism and its practical partner, moral equivalence, would 
ultimately end up the undoing of us all.
-- 
dep

http://www.linuxandmain.com -- outside the box, barely within
the envelope, and no animated paperclip anywhere.

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