On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 02:27:34PM -0500, bts@alum.mit.edu wrote: > I'm reasonably sure that in Thomas' view, those who cannot be bothered > to carefully observe bridges and examine the engineering diagrams > beforehand should not be walking on them, and deserve whatever happens > if they willy-nilly walk out on an alleged "bridge" only to later > discover it is in fact not a bridge, but a squirrel. Failure to check > the attendance and attention patterns of all those involved in > designing and implementing the bridge is merely a particular form of > the lack of attention which unfortunately pervades our society. I didn't have Thomas pegged as such an extreme right-wing libertarian. A right-wing libertarian is one who, like many conservatives, elevates the principles of "individualism" or "personal responsibility" to the point where any one person can be safely blamed for absolutely anything that happens to them. Ate poisoned corn flakes? You should have cross-referenced the product against the dozens of competing private consumer-research organizations, or taken a degree in chemical engineering and performed a spectral analysis of your breakfast cereal. Got shot in the face when answering your door? You should have answered the door in body armor, wearing an iron helmet and wielding an AK-47, or not answered the door at all. There's really little point in legally forbidding coercion through force or fraud in human affairs when one can simply blame the victim, which is far and away the preferred tactic of right-wingers, be they self-proclaimed Republicans, Libertarians, or something else. -- G. Branden Robinson | Intellectual property is neither Debian GNU/Linux | intellectual nor property. branden@debian.org | Discuss. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Linda Richman
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