I didn’t make that bomb!
Sami samir hassoun, a fine irish catholic lad, decided to overthrow the gummint of Chicaginois in an underpants-gnome-like plot of subversive whackiness.
Even when they aren’t the fanatics of a toxic ideology, muslims are nutbags. But let’s embrace them and their toxic ideology, because, well, live and let live, right?
This is the inherent fallacy of Libertarianism. Sometimes you just can’t let people live their own lives, because their idea of living their lives is FUCKING WITH YOU.
But I’m a bloodthirsty reactionary, so pay no attention to me.
Blowing up the World Trade Center is one thing, going after Wrigley is going too far.
I am not an expert on this, but I believe libertarians are allowed to release the Kracken onto people who will not leave them the f*** alone.
I’m sure you’re correct prof h, but their failure to act until the opponent is in arms reach is the problem.
Prof. Hale,
You are correct, sir. All is permitted, except force and fraud. In which case we libertarians shoot back. With bigger guns. (Proportionate? What’s that?)
Actually, I’m much more concerned about how the Federales keep Bragging about how “The Undercover Sting Operation Worked, and We STOPPED a Jihadist Wannabee from creating a Man-Caused Incident”, yet they couldn’t prevent Ft. Hood, the Christmas Plane Bomber and the Times Square Bomber from pulling the Trigger. One day, a PROFESSIONAL Achmed the Dead Terrorist will pull something off that the Federales didn’t know about, and more innocent lives will be lost. But they’ll just blame it on Bush, I guess.
Og: The philosophical problem, even for non-libertarians, is “when is the line crossed?”.
Not all libertarians (indeed, not most, if you press them, I think) suggest that force can only be used in reaction to force against you.
Many (such as the Objectivist branch, which is one redeeming feature, no matter how dismissible Rand is in general) will support the use of force to liberate others from tyranny (eg, the view that a tyrannical state is inherently illegitimate and constitutes an unjustified use of force on innocents in and of itself merely by existing, and that the use of force to stop such an abuse is inherently justified).
More relevantly, though, plenty of libertarians will take the threat of force as worthy of a forceful reply; I don’t need to wait for you to shoot at me to shoot back, if you’re already pointing a gun at me [without some sort of justification].
Even beyond that, if the guy across the street is always yelling that God wants him to kill you if you don’t do what he says, at some point that becomes a threat even if you never see him pointing a gun at you or eyeing you while sharpening his axe.
You are definitely right in that it’s, as the Holocaust survivor is reported to have said, important to believe the other guy when he says he wants to kill you.
I have come to regard moose-limbs the same way I do rabid skunks. It is no fault of the skunk that he’s rabid and I hold him to be innocent of malice, but that in no way makes him less dangerous. The safest way to neutralize that danger is to kill the skunk and burn the carcass.
Same-o same-o moose-limbs.
Thing is, most of the libertarians I know just want to smoke dope.
Call out the troops. I’m ready.