I sat through about a million Zoning and Planning Board meetings. It was the mainstay of my job. The boards love developers, they're eager to get new construction in town, and they bend over backwards to accommodate it.

And newspaper reporters love hard-luck stories about the little guy being trampled by bureacracy. It's like porn for teen-age boys. Even better if the victim is semi-literate -- cranks up the pathos. I interviewed the senders of a million of the kinds of letters that Vinnie describes, but only recall getting a story from one of them -- the rest were, alas, basically complaining that a civil servant did his job and they didn't like it.

This was in New Jersey 20 years ago, but I expect things are the same all over America, 10 years ago and today.

Jim, I'm sorry for your loss, and for all the losses of the people of that town. The victims all sound like they were well beyond the merely innocent and into the praiseworthy, even heroic. That is, of course, why evil wanted them destroyed.

May all the Carl Dregas of the world get the help they need before they turn to violence; or having set themselves on violence may they be stopped by persuasion or force before carrying it out; or failing that may they die quietly in their sleep the night before their planned attacks; or having begun their attacks may they be gunned down by the people's lawful representatives before they actually harm anyone.

As for the Vin Suprynowiczes of the world, I don't know what to say about them. May they see the error of their ways in time; or failing that may their words vanish harmlessly into the ether; or failing that may the harm they do be visited only on them, and not on the innocent? Seems inadequate somehow. Lords of Karma, help me.

Vinne sounds like a junkie giving himself a fix.

(Why yes, I did attend a panel at WorldCon that had him on it. How did you know? I don't know why they bother putting anyone else on a panel with him, since it's going to be all him shouting anyway. It would be somewhat better if he and I weren't on the same side—a side from which he drives away the polite and sensitive.)

Adam 5: Wow. Appalling. Remind me to purge my Christmas card list (not that I have one) of anyone who reads this guy from any perspective other than "know your psycho enemy."

If Vin lived locally, I might be very tempted to look him up and spit in his face. He goes beyond wrong-headed into Evil.

I summarize this guy's article thus:

"I don't like the government putting limits on what I can do with my property just because it would affect other people. This guy didn't like it either, so he shot a lot of people. That was cool, except he could have shot more of them, and here's what ammo you should use if you want to try the same thing. Either way, he was bravely standing up to the government jack-booted thugs and should be a hero to all of us."

"Also, government = Nazis."

W. T. F. There are no words.

That's code for "They want to do something that I don't approve of."

Jim, I empathize with your pain, sorrow and anger.

If he'd been carrying a weapon that could have penetrated Drega's body armor this story would have had a happier ending.

I don't consider myself a violent person, but anyone who could write something that callous and demeaning needs, geez I can't even think of anything bad enough to cover the magnitude of his sin. What removes unforgiveable smugness from dreck writers?

Writer's block, which I certainly wish on him forthwith.

There, it seems to me, they maintain a cult of freedom that has chosen to ignore that the added freedoms of all the other people still weigh much more than the freedom of the one person willing to p**s all the others off.

Who was the American frontiersman who claimed that it was time to move deeper into the wilderness once you could hear your closest neighbor's axe? I find this "my life, my property, my decisions, no one must tell me what to do" very anachronistic in an age of a closely interrelated society. Or solipsistic.

This open disdain for social conventions and agreements or even the democratic process (I have seen it called the dictatorship of the majority) feels very alien. For a moment I thought it resulted from the fact that parts of the US are still much more sparsely settled than Europe, with more room for cranky individualism - but then, Scandinavia ist sparsely settled too and hardly and example for this.

I realize this is related to many things that irritate me: I was raised rather conservatively and taught that politeness is very important. So the glee *some* advocates of Free Speech show when maintaining "I can insult, denigrate and stir up hate against anyone I chose, since no one has the right not to be offended." deeply disturbs me.

Another thing is the whole concept of unrestricted property rights. I still struggle with the idea that tracts of nature can be personal property at all, but claiming that the owner should be able to do to it what he likes is ... incredible, for my lack of a better word. But then, I grew up with the knowledge that the (our) constitution says: "Property entails obligations. Its use should serve the public interest."

I guess I start to ramble, so I will stop. Sorry for the longwindedness.

[1] Those folks are getting louder who claim that society as a whole does not exist, that economics conquer all and everyone should join in a merry race to the bottom of minimal or no welfare, labor security and human dignity since "in the age of globalization, whe have to undercut the Chinese conditions of producing things by removing the legal shackles that keep our industry down." Sorry for the polemics.

Excuse me, I must go throw up now.

There is something so fundamentally right to him in the contemplation of Government thugs and soulless, oppressive, bureaucrats being gunned down by a doughty, solid, yeoman who's "had enough" that it doesn't matter that the actual case bears little resemblance to this pornographic fantasy---"pornographic" because the image is so powerful for the bearer of it that it turns off rational and critical thought.

(I'm not letting him off the hook, but I do want to learn from his example and do unlikewise...where am _I_ not really thinking or seeing or judging because the picture is so compelling? If you dangled the Worker's Paradise in front of my eyes in 1917, or my humiliated nation triumphant in 1934, who would I not be willing to kill?)

Heck, think how easily we USAians had revenge for 9/11 dangled in front of us? Iraq did it! So attack Iraq! (The essential message of the song "Have You Forgotten?")

I followed the link to Orcinus, and he mentions a killer who was wound up, if not set in motion, by a group (a "Club") named after a stupid bird (the "Duck"). A distant relative -- not distant enough -- carried newsletters of this vile organization around, the time I met him. Said group seems to feel that taxes are just plain evil, for the usual reasons, and egg one another into thinking that if they stand on one foot and utter magic formulas by the shining of the moon, they can get by without paying them. He didn't live far from my parents, and whenever they mentioned seeing him, I expressed my distaste for the sleazy bastard, but they wouldn't hear a word against him. If I never hear his name again, outside the obituary pages, it'll be too soon.

I offer all these louts, entitled by their wonderful birth and sense of superiority, the same advice I would tender to would-be suicide bombers: "Why not just kill yourself first, and see if that makes you feel any better?"

On all of those, it was because they were advocating the sorts of... maunderings?, fantasies?, bizzare fetishes?, as this.

I meant every word of it then. I still mean every word of it, and the sentiments are transferrable.

I'm sorry Jim, that it happened. That this morally bankrupt buffoon is out there making the memory worse, and that you had to spend so much time on it.

My sympathies, all around.

They took away his turtles? Suddenly it all makes perfect sense! What, did this guy work out the logical arguments for his article using some sort of mad-lib technique?

I have a feeling that this Vinnie guy wanted to go off on how the Eeeevil Government was pushing the Honest Little Guy to the brink and needed someone to use as an example, and shoehorned Drega (using the Mighty Shoehorn of Rationalization heavily lubed up with copious quantities of Slime and Bullshit) into that role in his agenda out of sheer personal convenience.

Y'know, I'd be totally willing to contribute to a fund to purchase property next door to this hack and put in your proposed pig-offal pond. And I'd be willing to fund some gigantic fans to make sure the wind was always blowing in the right direction.

Second, Jim, Kudos for the intestinal fortitude to read something like VS (yes, I mean thing) and respond so cogently and calmly;

Third, Tom, I was glad when Canada (in the person of Stockwell Day) decided not to allow the WBC people to cross the border. They are beyond the pale of society and humankindness in so many ways. Although not an active believer currently, I pray that their karmic settlement will be painfull and take eternity to fulfill.

As noted above, there are no words. if you can stomach it, hie yourself over to the newspaper that is willing to print his crap to see brave Vinnie's warlike mien. If it were up to me, I'd make him visit Colebrook and listen to the people who still live there. Not talk, just listen.

IMHO libertarians are people who don't believe humans are social animals. In the cases of Drega and VS, this goes along with full-blown sociopathology: an inability to act or *feel* like a social animal.

Jorg @17: Your insight is extremely useful.

My theory, which is mine: Historically, it has been exceptionally easy for people in the US to detach themselves from networks where others know them personally, yet to be able to depend on impersonal, industrial/capitalist networks for survival. This doesn't *feel* like depending on other people, so it's easy to think you're self-reliant and independent, beholden to no man.

Speaking as an biologist, human sociality is not all that deep, evolutionarily speaking. Some sociopathology is surely a matter of a basic neuro-biological lack, a problem in the brain. But it can also be matter of upbringing or habit, so that neurologically normal people lose or never develop the mental skill of seeing things from another's POV.

It's not coicidence, IMHO, that Drega was a "summer person", whose only connection to the community was property. The connections Jim and Debra have to the town and the area are far deeper, more complex, more personal and (I do not use this word casually) natural. If things like this happen more often than they used to, more often in the US than in Europe, or more often in some parts of the US than the rest, it's IMHO these are places because sociopathic behavior is more normal, where it's within the range of what is acceptable.

I don't think this is unconnected to the well-known fact that if corporations were humans (not just legal persons), they would be sociopaths.

Lee@21: It wouldn't matter if one of these guys was stuck into the position they want others in. I recall one of the relatives getting obnoxious in a bar. Short version: he was flat on the floor in three punches, and hadn't laid a finger on the other guy by the time the brother-in-law dragged him out. His version, three months later: It was six to two and they ran for it after laying out the six, 'cause the bartender called the cops.

Seriously.

The only thing you can really hope for with most of these losers is that they never get their gumption in the same room as their guns.

(FWIW, most of my relatives have so little gumption that the hoards of guns... yes, hoards... are mostly irrelevant.

Mostly.)

Eff off, Vin.

I'm often surprised by how easily adult human beings, (men more easily than women, IMO, but I could be mistaken) seem to forget that they -- we -- emerge from the womb utterly helpless, utterly dependent. For an infant, each morsel of food is a gift from another human being; each moment of warmth, of comfort, and of safety is the same. Dependency is the first, most natural relationship we have, and some of us spend much of our time here (on this planet, this plane of existence, or this life) denying it or refusing it -- or trying to kill it.

Since Jörg (#17) mentions Scandinavia, we in Norway do in fact have an undercurrent of sympathy for the contrarian, which sometimes extends to accepting the worldview of outright cranks, even condoning the actions of people with mental problems. I'm in two minds about this. On one hand, as a Norwegian I, too, feel that we are right in a concern for the little man against the state, as opposed to the more elitist attitudes of the ruling classes of some of the the countries down on the continent. On the other hand, this kind of attitude also leads to the kind of right-wing populist and discontent party that citizens of other countries usually are seduced by when they are in a recession, in fact is the largest party when Norway is richer than ever, has close to zero unemployment for its citizens, etc. Of course, not everything is perfect, but it is a bit mindboggling, really.

Per

I don't wish flamy death on people, nor do I believe in the afterlife. However, I recognize that all humans are mortal, and wish on all self righteous fanatics of the stripe of Vinnie and Drega the apocryphal death of Elvis when it comes.

On the crapper, with trousers around the ankles, preferably surrounded by their stocks of killing materiel. A copy of Guns and Ammo on the bathroom floor.

(Dick in hand would be a bonus*. "Rush Limbaugh, I want to be your man-bitch" scrawled on the wall may be too far.)

Tough to get yourself written up as a martyr with that image.

*Not that The King, according to the story, hand anything but a Big Mac in his hand at the time.

God, I hope "Big Mac" wasn't a euphemism.

A second point: there are cranks all over the world. Looking up "Martin Bryant" on google, I discovered a whole heap of the home-grown variety (summed up: Bryant was framed, mind-controlled, physically incapable of doing what he did, mentally incapable of doing it, etc). At least our variety find it a bit harder to gain access to weapons of mass destruction on a regular basis (which is something that Martin Bryant was at least indirectly responsible for, and one of the few bits of decent policy which came out of John Howard's years as Prime Minister, in my highly subjective opinion).

People such as Kropotkin had the smarts to respond to, and discredit Social Darwinism. Idiots such as Vin remain stuck in an ancient, rotting, mass of stinking ordure, sharing with the fascists the idea that there is nothing but government, and acting as though society does not exist.

A century ago, anarchism had far outreached the personal wet-dreams of Libertarianism. We're a social species. We organise. That's one of the biggest evolutionary tricks we have. That's why we're not limited to something the size of a troop of baboons. (Language has a lot to do with this.)

What anarchism challenges is the need for organisations which, controlled by the few, dominate the many.

You seem to be taking the point of view that libertarians are the problem and corporations are the problem.

Actually, there are sociopaths in all sorts of situations, including in governments. Democracy and the rule of law somewhat limit the effect sociopaths can have, but not nearly as much as one might hope.

You're mistaken. Take Ann Coulter, please.

I was unclear due to anger about the whole thing, and if I have offended the real (ie non-sociopathic) libertarians, I apologize.

Now that I have read further comments, I cannot help but see the similarities between some of these "libertarian" worldviews and the behaviour of a few (mostly male) people during puberty and the following years.

~ the basic conviction that nearly everything is about them and seeing how something affects them first and foremost

~ the complete contempt of other peoples' needs interests and feelings - people outside their own circle. Inside that circle, effectively attacking outsiders verbally can heighten the status.

~ the extreme, beyond-rational disdain for authority, especially if it denies them their wisehs or whims.

~ the (verbal) enthusiasm for violent solutions

~ the strong tendency to see and explain everything in simplified black and white, no greyscale at all.

~ the habit of holding grudges forever

That may be natural in a certain stadium of development, after all there is a mimimum age for voting, driving etc. But people are expected to grow out of that mindset when maturing. Except from those actively evil people like the one Jim quoted (sorry, could not read all of that and will not scroll up to look up the name), many "libertarians" sound simply very immature.

You seem to be taking the point of view that libertarians are the problem and corporations are the problem.

No. I'm saying that humans become well-socialized in societies where you interact with a few hundred or thousand other people over the course of a life, so each relationship has personal context and depth. In a small-scale, "natural" society like that, sociopathic behavior will be rare, because people who can't be trusted will starve.

In a modern society, we have connections to many many more people -- not just because we see more people, but through the exchange of goods and money. Something as basic to my life as electricity requires the coordinated efforts of many thousands of people -- but my relationship to each of those people is extremely weak.

It's like -- imagine my hunter-gatherer ancestor, anchored to other people by a web of 100 ropes, each one strong and obvious. I, on the other hand, am in a web of 10 million strands, most of which are so fine as to be invisible. Collectively, my web is thicker and more gripping than hers -- she could usually make her own clothes and gather enough food for survival -- but it's harder to see. And libertarians IMHO are people who have a hard time seeing it.

Now, what kind of surprised me- thought it shouldn't- is how much the community that Drega attacked is like the places and people that the Drega-admiring types claim to speak for- small town, government to a good deal run by part-timers who are employed elsewhere in their main jobs and get elected by their neighboors, local ordinances passed by citizens' assemblies, all that.

Wich makes me wonder- did you (the community, not you personally), at some time in these eleven years, get visits from Drega worshippers who wanted to see the place of their boy's actions and congratulated you for having such a hero in your midst, and then couldn't understand the reactions they got?

Thanks.

#49 ::: Doctor Science:

There are, of course, a lot of different sorts of people who become libertarians. From my point of view, government does a tremendous amount to destroy sociality rather than being a primary representative of sociality.

But she seems to be condemning a particular idea of society, and what she said does, at least, deserve consideration.

And I think she was wrong.

And not for the obvious reason. When she says that the government can't do everything, she thinks that is Society. At least, that is how she expresses her thought. She comes across as making the same basic mistake as the people she is criticising. And if Society doesn't exist, what is left to control government? The obligation she points to depends on a sense that there is something more than family. Ultimately, it depends on some common feeling held by large numbers of people.

Without society what oblications are left? What sense of shame can there be?

Jim, I can't imagine what it must have been like for you to read this, when I was nowhere near it and didn't know about it until now and I still want to punch Suprynowicz in the face.

Anyone in emergency services or farming or a parent has to find a way to deal with this; they all get to deal with cases of being unfixably too late to prevent a bad occurrence pretty regularly, and there is no actual general corrective for this.

There's statistical pressure, educational or systemic—something I take to be one of Jim's motivations for his educational posts on first aid and risk management—but there's no actual "this won't happen" mechanism. The fire does get to advanced to save the building, the kid does manage to fall down the stairs, the passenger does get killed going through the windshield, the hail flattens the crop, and there's not a blessed thing you can do about it now.

Lots of people with poor socialization (meaning they still connect band status to being unconstrained in their behaviour towards others) need an absolute construction of how they should be able to be unconstrained, because the fine-strand web is invisible and they're terrified by being helpless.

It's a really tough thing to deal with, even in people who haven't got an organic brain dysfunction, because an axiom or two have to go (either the construction of status or the terror at helplessness at a minimum) before the pattern may be escaped.

Combine that with being perfectly willing to die rather than give up perceived status—and before you decide that's rare, consider how a lot of people drive—or actual organic brain disfunction and I think it's a wonder killing sprees are rare.

We may be getting better at connecting people to necessary problem solving groups, even when the failures, like this one Jim's describing, are so entirely wretched.

Needless to say, as a quasi- literate product
of the government schools...

This has been bugging me for a couple of days.

Surely in this brave self-reliant world, a man should be responsible for improving his own mind? I mean, ideally, he should educate himself entirely, so as to divorce himself from dependence on the government teat that is K-12. But even failing that, I don't see how the government's failure to educate him excuses his failure of self-reliance.

And in a sense that's true.

In the same sense, there's no such thing as a government, either. Or an economic system. Or an ecosystem.

Nothing solid you can thump, touch, or point to, and say, "That's it."

You could "thump" some components of said systems, perhaps -- people, pieces of paper, trees, etc. -- but the systems themselves are less concrete.

Could we all be so lucky as to have that be what Thatcher meant?

No, I think her meaning was quite Randian. Otherwise she'd have followed up by saying "there's no such thing as property, either" or some such. (After all, she's not denying that people exist, only that there are relationships between them that constitute society; by the same token, one would, while acknowledging that objects exist, deny that there is any relationship between them and any person that constitutes ownership.)

Serious question. I ask because every single description of the philosophy I've ever heard has struck me as grossly antisocial in the way it denies community ties, unrealistically self-congratulatory as regards self-reliance, and much like a spoiled brat in that it recognizes but one Unforgivable Sin, that being "Somebody told me NO!" (often manifesting in such specific forms as "They won't let me do X with my property!" or "How dare they tax me to pay for roads and police and safety nets for the less fortunate and stuff!").

I recognize that my negative opinion of Libertarianism may be purely attributable to overexposure to bad representatives of the philosophy. Bad representatives in the way that, say, The So-Called Reverend Fred Phelps is a bad representative of Christianity. So can someone please correct my impression? What is Libertarianism really and truly, so I can form a better informed opinion about it?

(Side question: At some point, isn't it possible for the bad representatives to become accurate representatives? Because the good representatives stopped representing? Either through lack of energy or lack of numbers?)

My charitable interpretation of "There's no such thing as society" is that society is not some sort of organism that exists independently of the people who compose it. I haven't cared to study Thatcher enough to know if that's what she meant.

You asked "At some point, isn't it possible for the bad representatives to become accurate representatives?" Yes, I'm afraid so. Maybe you were thinking of the Republican that the Libertarian Party selected as their presidential nominee. For this and other reasons some libertarians (small l) are discussing whether the Libertarian Party (capital L) has passed its sell-by date.

As for the self-reliance and denial of the web of interconnectedness, it hasn't always been so. Back when I used to hang out with other libertarians (and even Libertarians) more often, there was always a lot of debate and conjecture and brainstorming about how various situations could be handled by voluntary organizations such as co-ops, labor unions, consumer rating bureaus, mutual aid societies, insurance companies, and on and on. All of those are quite social -- they just don't have to be governmental. There was also discussion about whether or not this or that edge case had enough externalities to justify government intervention to protect the rights of third parties.

Of course none of that fits in a bumper sticker or a sound bite, nor for that matter in the small mind of someone whose only concern is that the black helicopters are coming to take away his guns.

And to bring this back on topic: I don't see anything in the writing of Vin Suprynowicz quoted here that would lead me to call him a libertarian. He sounds to me more like a right-wing hatemonger. (And by right wing I mean far right wing, not a run-of-the-mill economically conservative Republican.)

• Left-Libertarianism

• Libertarian socialism (no, it's not a contradiction in terms!)
• Geolibertarianism (with land and natural resources not considered as property in the conventional sense)
  

1) "I got mine, Jack, fuck you."
2) "But I WANNA! And who the hell are you to tell me no?"
3) "It's okay, the leak isn't on OUR end of the lifeboat."

And all of those things share in common that lack of reciprocity. Empathy too, but you don't have to have empathy to recognize that reciprocity is a necessary component of human social systems -- at least, if you want them to last.

But they were libertarians before the enterprise was gooked up by property rights fetishism, free-market absolutism, and a dismaying enthusiasm for corporate thuggery.

The libertarians that write editorials, and most of the ones I run into on online fora, are firmly in the corporate babbitry wing of the movement.

That's very well-put. Methinks I might yoink it.

Graydon @ 58: "Another way to take the 'fine strand' model is that a lot of people deal poorly with recognizing that they are, fundamentally, pretty helpless."

I think this is especially true for men: social expectations (particularly in the U.S.) are that a guy should be entirely self-reliant, able to change a tire/fix the toilet/build a desk/fight a ninja/build a house/survive nuclear winter/etc. all by his lonesome. This has been reinforced by the image of the pioneer, bravely striking out to create civilization where there was none, supported by nothing but his own indomitable spirit (and equipment produced by millions of people inventing over thousands of years).

That illusion of independence peaked a while back, and it's been becoming harder and harder to maintain. It's a lot easier to imagine running an early American homestead on one's own than it is to imagine running a modern farm. It's a lot easier to raise horses than it is to manufacture and maintain cars, and cars are a lot easier than computers. For people who believe that self-reliance is the measure of the man, men have become far less manly.

Consequently, when my attention was drawn, later on, to the relations between Darwinism and Sociology, I could agree with none of the works and pamphlets that had been written upon this important subject. They all endeavoured to prove that Man, owing to his higher intelligence and knowledge, may mitigate the harshness of the struggle for life between men; but they all recognized at the same time that the struggle for the means of existence, of every animal against all its congeners, and of every man against all other men, was "a law of Nature." This view, however, I could not accept, because I was persuaded that to admit a pitiless inner war for life within each species, and to see in that war a condition of progress, was to admit something which not only had not yet been proved, but also lacked confirmation from direct observation.

That follows the outline of his observations as a naturalist, at the beginning of the book.

Project Gutenberg link for the book

Oh, but it is; just like you exist independently of your genes and amino acids and constituent proteins, etc. Pattern and system are real things. (The classic example would be 'change how a large organization behaves'; this is remarkably difficult to do, even employing Stalinist methods...)

David Bell --

There are lots of examples of mutualism and co-operation in "Origin of Species"; the problem is that "nature red in tooth and claw" had a lot more resonance with Victorian high society.

I think you're thinking of Dan'l Boone, though the formulation I recall was "when you could see the smoke from your neighbor's chimney".

The resources I'd recommend for a good base text on libertarian thought would be two:
Bastiat's The Law
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Note that libertarians (except Randians) are generally very big on voluntary social networks; the big point of difference is that we don't accept that force-based networks are legitimate.

"You've got to grow your own grain, cook your own whisky,
Make your own powder, brew your own beer;
You've got to be your own blacksmith, doctor, and police force --
The only help you'll get is what you get right here."

He notes that Libertarians (particularly of the anarcho-Libertarian variety) tend to like it for what he calls "all the wrong reasons". What it's really describing is how unpleasant that life would be in a number of ways. ("...and I lost my youngest daughter when the fever came last spring...")

Allan Beaty --
society is not some sort of organism that exists independently of the people who compose it

Oh, but it is; just like you exist independently of your genes and amino acids and constituent proteins, etc

Likewise, if all "your genes and amino acids and constituent proteins, etc" were to disappear, what was left of you would very quickly cease to function, and there might even be some forensic argument over identifying the remains as you.

Of course there have been cases where being within the effective reach of state meant that a person might not have a very orderly life; for example if you lived under the state ran by Pinochet or Stalin just to mention two obvious examples.

If you are seriously interested in the topic of law without state control I suggest you read the book Order with Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes by Ralph C. Ellickson. The spring board for the book is case studies of livestock related disputes in Shasta County, California; one of the interesting things is how practices evolved and in some cases in ways which did not agree with what was state law.

Also I am unclear on what you mean by 'Libertoids'. Are you referring to me? Other persons who have posted on this thread? Or ???

See metaphors such as "the Body Politic," the social body founding metaphor of the Odonians in The Dispossessed, &c.

In other words, what Jörg Raddatz @46 describes as "those sociopaths who try to mask their deficiencies by stealing the term".

Also, don't stomp the delurking on their first post.

People replace their constituent chemicals; the person is still there, despite being (potentially) entirely different atoms.

Your examples are equivalent to 'with no atoms, there would be no life'; this is true, but it doesn't mean there is nothing about life -- that self-replicating organization of matter -- which makes it distinct from the same atoms without the organization.

I have some libertarian tendencies, I can't describe myself as a Libertarian, because they promote people like R#n Paul (and what a sad comment that I am leery of using his name in the clear, lest it cause further derailment).

The people who are most ardently claiming the mantle are not the sorts of people whom I like, and have the desire that the word not be so tainted. But I think that horse has left the barn, and I don't think there is any way to catch another and break it to saddle. The factious nature of the ideals is such that there isn't going to be any doctrine all will abide, and those who have the money (a la Reason) will be of the, "Property is Sacred, and I've got mine" stripe.

I also have a problem with the way libertarians (as a general whole) define force. The voluntary associations they say they want are a form of force. It may be the veiled threat of the mass action, but force is the implicit argument which lies beneath it. It always seems to me that the problem is who gets to authorise the force (but that's usually the question)

But when these arguments are raised we get the, "X has not been tried and found wanting, X has been found hard and not tried." The "true" practitioners of X, you see are reasonable, and if listened to we all get ponies.

Well, I don't want the earthly paradise, I just want a place where I can "swing my arms," and trust that when my neighbor does the same he won't be hitting my nose. I believe in society. I think it impossible for people to live, in groups, without depending on each other, and giving to each other (which means taking from each other too). If one doesn't want to do that, I am sure there are trackless acres someplace in which to take an axe and clear a farm.

But in the rest of the world, taxes, services, laws, and yes force, are not only needful, but carefully managed, a decided good.

You're thinking of Daniel Boone, who was praised in his own day for his individualism, which was seen as Romantic. From Byron's Don Juan:

Of all men, saving Sylla the man-slayer,
Who passes for in life and death most lucky,
Of the great names, which in our faces stare,
The General Boone, backwoodsman of Kentucky,
Was happiest among mortals any where,
For killing nothing, but a bear or buck; he
Enjoy'd the lonely, vigorous, harmless days,
Of his old age, in wilds of deepest maze.

Crime came not near him; she is not the child
Of solitude; health shrank not from him, for
Her home is in the rarely trodden wild,
Which, if men seek her not, and death be more
Their choice than life, forgive them, as beguil'd
By habit to what their own hearts abhor —
In cities cag'd. The present case in point I
Cite is, Boone liv'd hunting up to ninety:

And, what is stranger, left behind a name,
For which men vainly decimate the throng;
Not only famous, but of that good fame,
Without which glory's but a tavern song;
Simple, serene, the antipodes of shame,
Which hate or envy e'er could tinge with wrong;
An active hermit; even in age the child
Of nature, or the Man of Ross run wild.

'Tis true, he shrank from men even of his nation,
When they built up unto his darling trees;
He mov'd some hundred miles off, for a station,
Where there were fewer houses find more ease.
The inconvenience of civilization
Is, that you neither can be pleased, nor please.
But where he met the individual man,
He show'd himself as kind as mortal can.

He was not all alone; around him grew
A sylvan tribe of children of the chase,
Whose young, unwaken'd world was always new;
Nor sword, nor sorrow, yet had left a trace
On her unwrinkled brow; nor could you view
A frown on nature's, or on human face.
The free-born forest found, and kept them free,
And fresh as is a torrent or a tree.

And tall and strong, and swift of foot were they,
Beyond the dwarfing city's pale abortions;
Because their thoughts had never been the prey
Of care or gain; the green woods were their portions
No sinking spirits told them they grew gray,
No fashion made them apes of her distortions.
Simple they were; not savage; and their rifles,
Though very true, were not yet us'd for trifles.

Motion was in their days; rest in their slumbers;
And cheerfulness the handmaid of their toil;
Nor yet too many, nor too few their numbers;
Corruption could not make their hearts her soil;
The lust, which stings; the splendor which encumbers,
With the free foresters divide no spoil.
Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes
Of this unsighing people of the woods.

Having been a part of a small community with a dreadful murder (my son's nanny, as it happens. Television series inc :P), I understand if it's simply a case of "No, we've had enough people peering at us, thanks."

I guess, it just seems ... a shame? ... for the detail to be hidden in this small corner of the web.

I did, in fact, think of this. But true-crime isn't my forte, and I am too close to certain parts of it. If some true-crime writer was interested, however, I could tell him/her who to contact and could provide introductions.

You do. The institution of property is 100 percent based on force, and so, every network that involves upholding respect for it is dedicated to force. And since libertarians usually believe that property (depending on what kind of libertarians they are) should either always or almost always be respected, you basically want the particular kind of force that you support to be the supreme, unchangeable rule everywhere and forever, no matter wether the rest of us want that or not- while claiming to fight for freedom and complaining about being oppressed by the rest of us.

If a number (and it's a small number) of different folks hit that link the review is deleted automatically.

Organized groups have figured out how to keep any non-five-star reviews off of their books.

Followers of renowned skeptic James Randi would be Randiians, then, right? heh.

As one of the Amazon reviewers ("we put the ass in astute") explains, "It matters not that a 'duly elected government' passed this law, because the Bill of Rights are God given and cannot be usurped."

I met Drega on August 7, 1997. I was working as the outreach coordinator for NH's Wetlands Bureau at the time. I was asked by a secretary to speak with a rather upset gentleman in the lobby that day. We spoke for over an hour. He had some valid points... there were things in the past that could have been handled differently. However nothing could justify what he did shortly after our meeting. His parting words that day leave me with no doubt whatsoever that he was looking for an excuse to act out and it was just a matter of time. When it did happen, the coldness with which he acted was what stuck with me. And yet, as inexcusable as his actions were somehow I actually managed to have some amount of sympathy for him as a human being. I don't believe I could find any such sympathy for Mr. Suprynowicz. His twisting of the facts to suit his political purposes is far more disturbing to me than acts of Mr. Drega.

I don't think I could read this book to give it a review. I'd be to angry to finish it.

He's right about Interstate 91 cutting people in Springfield and other cities off from their river. It's just like a wall that keeps you from it, you'd never know it's there and if you try to go near the river, there's no real access points.

Also, he's right about the relative impotence of the .223 compared to the .308 or .30-06, it has nowhere near the killing capacity of those rounds, especially farther away. The round is a wounding round and was chosen for that reason--you take more people off the battlefield when you wound than when you kill (the wounded and those helping him). Also, a soldier can carry more rounds for the same weight.

He's also right that in some states it would be illegal to hunt deer with a .223--it's too small and doesn't kill cleanly.

Minor points I know...

The system gave him everything but his selfish murderous way, handed it to him on a silver platter that people the world over would envy. He could have used those tools to make any kind of life for himself and any kind of community around himself. That this is all he could think to do is a judgment on him.

Making the choices he did does not make him any kind of hero. He threw a temper tantrum that killed innocent people; that makes him a chickenshit villain.

But somehow I don't think those systemic oppressions matter to you.

Fck y sdwys. <-- pre-disemvoweled for everyone's convenience.