Friday, March 05, 2010

Authoritarianism is the pits

Authoritarianism is the pits

Few people are a solid block of authoritarianism. Most are like a cherry pie of libertarianism with a few pits of authoritarianism hidden inside. There is no problem when interacting with them until you encounter these pits.

The pit may be "abortion", or welfare of some sort ("social security", "farm subsidies"), or it may be a desire for the state to impose religious "values" on those who do not share that religion. Some people are so full of pits that it is impossible to interact with them without the experience being a miserable encounter, and some people have such a small pit it may never be noticed unless you are really trying.

Part of life and self-responsibility should be about discovering your own pits and eliminating them, not about zealously defending your pits or adding more pits to your pie.
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In a completely unrelated news story, "fleeing" robbery suspects were shot at yesterday by an Albuquerque LEO. Now, I have no problem with anyone defending themselves from attack. Even LEOs and freelance aggressors still retain the right of self-defense. My skepticism comes from the claim that the "fleeing" suspects were trying to run over the LEO. It seems convenient and I have seen other cases where such a claim on the part of LEOs was completely fabricated to justify shooting. Remove the uniform and badge from the mix and would the shooting have been justified (according to the government) or would the shooter be facing charges? Excuse my lack of credulity where the narrative of the LEOs is concerned, but I have seen enough deception from "officials" to make me want proof before I accept their version of events. Maybe there is independent video of the shooting that will show what happened. Until then, I reserve judgment.