Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site mtung.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!whuxcc!lcuxlm!whuxl!houxm!mtuxo!mtune!mtung!slj From: slj@mtung.UUCP (S. Luke Jones) Newsgroups: net.politics,net.sci Subject: Re: Re: Population control Message-ID: <765@mtung.UUCP> Date: Fri, 29-Aug-86 12:25:47 EDT Article-I.D.: mtung.765 Posted: Fri Aug 29 12:25:47 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 31-Aug-86 01:47:38 EDT References: <7802159@inmet> <555@gargoyle.UUCP> <144@csustan.UUCP> Organization: AT&T ISL Middletown NJ USA Lines: 72 Xref: watmath net.politics:18796 net.sci:1565 "Nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." --Ripley, in the motion picture ALIENS. > ... > would you rather be dead, or "Red"? For myself, I "Better Dead than Red" is a punched-up, succinct restatement of Patrick Henry's famous speech ending, "Is life so sweet, or peace so dear, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death." Henry was NOT advocating rolling up into a ball and dying under British oppression. He was advocating kicking their butts back to England where they belonged, and he was dismissing the argument that some blood would be spilled in the process. (Thomas Jefferson said the same thing when he told us "the tree of liberty needs to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots.") > would rather live under (and fight) a Soviet tyranny than be a cloud of vapor > or some other sort of wartime casualty. We can infer from the Soviet Agrarian Reform Program in Afghanistan that you might well end up dead anyway, courtesy a Hind gunship, if you persisted in resisting the benefits of socialism. From WWII, we can infer that if you lived to be captured by the Russians you might be killed outright as at Katyn Forest in Poland or marched across a field to clear it of mines. War is no Sunday School Picnic. Casualties DO happen. > I don't like either idea, but I > would rather that we all tightened our belts, even at the cost of some civil > liberties, than that we should loose the Four Horsemen yet again. Liberty > is very important, indeed worth fighting for, but life is more precious yet. "Some civil liberties"? Do you think the Russians are going to stop after imposing a curfew and prohibiting free assembly? Ask someone who lived in Berlin in May, 1945 where the Russians drew the line. For that matter, ask a "refusenik" in Moscow today. Maybe things aren't quite as obvious today, because they're done retail now rather than wholesale, but in a society where you could arbitrarily be denounced for the high crime of monitoring Helsinki Convention violations and sentenced to 10 years labor in a camp with a mean life expectancy of six months, life without "some civil liberties" could be quite short indeed. > If the human race is to survive, we must not destroy our home; if there are > people who cannot see this, we may have to use coercion. If it comes down > to my life or your liberty, and it very well may do so ... or, if it is your > life or my liberty ... it is not possible to always preserve both, and life > must come first. As long as there is life, there is always the possibility > of liberty. You seem to be saying, "A burglar is coming over here tonight. If you don't leave it unlocked, he may damage the door when he kicks it in." (Or, to bring the bogeyman of N-weapons into the picture, "A stupid burglar is coming over tonight to rob the house, but first he's going to have it bulldozed.") If we are to be killed (or -- lucky us -- merely robbed, pistol-whipped, and threatened repeatedly with death) and our home is to be given over to our victimizers, and if THEY make the home uninhabitable in the process, you want me to cry tears? If they'd stay away from my house, they wouldn't have a problem! > Scott Hazen Mueller Luke Jones -- O "It'll be just like bulls-eyeing Womp Rats O OOO O in Devil's Canyon back home in my T-16." OO O OO OOOO OOO OOOO S. Luke Jones OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ...ihnp4!mtung!slj OOOOOOOOOOOOO AT&T Information Systems OOOOOOO Middletown, NJ, U.S.A.