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• Monday, October 6, 2008 01:07 AM

  AKA Smith

  Here in UT humanity is useful only as an abstract matter of law -- but people forget that the law is always defined by people in power.

  People here obsess over who is in power and who is not precisely because we know that the law is always defined by the powerful. Since when have the powerless ever had any say in things?

  Moreover, when there is money to be made, as there is in human trafficking, prostitution, and porn, the libertarian impulse that so drives many of Glenn's more devoted admirers always makes excuses upon the side of a mythical choice or freewill -- a concept that has never been scientifically proven but has been enshrined in the religion that so many of them claim to disdain. So much for human consistency.

  It is possible to be libertarian enough to wish to allow people to do as they choose with their own bodies and socialist enough to believe that they should be given the training and skills to do what they wish and have backup if they fall on their face. It's also possible to be authoritarian enough and capitalist enough to wish to allow people to literally starve before they do something which you personally find distasteful.

  Which is more important in your eyes, making illegal that behavior you wish made illegal, *or* making sure that economic pressures are never ever brought to bear on people that encourage them to make the choice to do what it is you wish made illegal?

  The carrot or the stick, that is the question.

  —Aycharaych Read Aycharaych's other letters
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