RE: Being Extropic

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Aug 04 2003 - 12:46:14 MDT

  • Next message: Brett Paatsch: "Re: To thine ownself be true?"

    --- Emlyn O'regan <oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au> wrote:
    > Mike Lorrey wrote:
    > > The major threats to my continued existence/lifestyle are:
    > >
    > > a) liberal Democrats (not all Democrats)
    > > b) statist Republicans (not all Republicans)
    > > c) the two party system
    > > d) the continued lack of liberty present in the rest of the world,
    > > particularly the muslim and communist worlds, which continues to
    > > feed the phobias and fears that give strength to statists of both
    > > parties and the electoral system they hold hostage.
    > > e) continued lack of rationality and intelligence in statist
    > > camps that results in such stupidities as the cancelling of the
    > > Terror Futures Market.
    > > (not necessarily in this order)
    >
    > I'll probably never agree with the gun ownership stuff, but maybe we
    > can chalk this up to cultural differences.

    Frankly, a little objective research changes lots of minds from your
    side of the pond.

    >
    > That said, I agree that the actions of our domestic governments under
    > the banner of fighting terrorism pose more of a threat than does
    > terrorism itself. Although I'm sure they have must have secret
    > information to which I am not privy, which would change my mind.
    > Otherwise, how could they sleep at night?

    That was not my conclusion. My conclusion was that the very REAL
    threats and risks of terrorism (and the damage it does, counting in the
    thousands of lives and many hundreds of billions of dollars) are a
    better insurance for the ruling parties to retain leadership than the
    Soviet Union ever was. Who wants to risk voting in some unknown freaky
    third party candidate when we have a 'war' to run?

    So there is a vested interest in maintaining the sort of conditions
    that give rise to anti-US organizations of militant or non-militant
    bent, just as the anti-Catholic groups in northern Ireland have a
    vested interest in maintaining repression of Catholics that help
    recruiting for the IRA, the anti-nuke groups have a vested interest in
    fighting against resolution of the nuclear waste issue via either
    breeder reactors or long term storage facilities, etc.

    Similarly, many other nations ruling parties have a vested interest in
    using an anti-US position and anti-US propaganda to maintain their own
    grips on power.

    Zero-sum games are not yet obsolete, despite the claims of many on this
    list. While they don't work well in economics, they are quite fine in
    politics, where you can't quantify things so well, so it's much easier
    to smoke over an issue with lies and deflection.

    =====
    Mike Lorrey
    "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                                        - Gen. John Stark
    Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com
    Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/
    Pro-tech freedom discussion:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom

    __________________________________
    Do you Yahoo!?
    Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
    http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Aug 04 2003 - 12:55:05 MDT