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From: edp@jareth.enet.dec.com (Eric Postpischil (Always mount a scratch monkey.))
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Musing on Constitutionality
Message-ID: <15249@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 10 Sep 90 12:44:02 GMT
References: <11609@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <11503@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <82778@aerospace.AERO.ORG> <50@hyprion.ddmi.com>
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Reply-To: edp@jareth.enet.dec.com (Eric Postpischil (Always mount a scratch monkey.))
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
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In article <11609@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>, spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford)
writes:

>1) You are in little danger of having no civil rights.

I disagree.  Did you see my article "The Bill of Rights, a Status Report"?  I
posted it to several newsgroups earlier this week.  Every part of the Bill of
Rights is being threatened by actual incidents, court decisions, and/or pending
legislation.  The powers of government are creeping; they increase insidiously
and are very difficult to take back.

>2) You should be able to have civil rights and also not have to deal
>with criminals.  The two are not mutually exclusive.

I think they are exclusive.  Actually, I think the latter is impossible,
strictly speaking.  That is, we will never be able to completely eliminate
crime.  Our government can provide a skeletal structure for society.  It can
provide goals that encourage productivity and happiness and discourage crime. 
But making it so that people did not have to deal with criminals would require
strict controls, strong power, and great information about people.  There just
is not any way to prevent everybody from committing unethical acts without
controlling everybody.  And that requires an oppressive government.


				-- edp