Re: Another reason to fly GA...


"George Patterson" <grpphoto@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ROhEe.67$S72.63@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Doug Semler wrote:
>>
>> Sooo, if I am a student (backpack) with a resemblance to someone
>> (passing or specific), wearing a "padded coat" (in mid to high 60's
>> weather and rain forecast, and I have the chills because of the flu)
>> and run from armed people (unclear whether these armed police were
>> plainclothes or not)...it gives those armed people the right to kill me
>> from 2 feet away?!?!?!
>
> Yes, it does.
>

The terrorists' dream scenario.... a society killing its own.

The damage done to a society, by the death of 20 at the hands of terrorists,
will be far less than the damage done to the same society, by the death of a
single innocent person at the hands of the "law".

Because the terrorists will forever be recognized as the ones doing the
killing, will forever be in the "wrong", will never have sympathizers, will
be hunted and brought to justice one by one, too slowly for some to be sure,
but the enemy will be clear and civilized societies will band together for
the hunt to go on.

However, a single innocent person killed by authority, in a democracy
undermines that authority. A democracy without trust in its infrastructure
is doomed to become something considerably less than a civil
democracy...fighting its own citizens, fighting its own authorities,
fighting outsiders, a state of perpetual paranoia.

Even if our Brazilian electrician was, in fact, a bomb-carrier, there is no
guarantee that his death would have "saved lives". There is no way to know
what forces would be set in motion amongst his allies, friends, family, or
even complete strangers... who may have viewed this as his "martyrdom" and
a call to even more militancy... there is just no way to know whether the 20
lives saved here, may or may not have turned into 120 otherwise-safe lives
somewhere down the road.

Now it is one thing to kill someone that is truly "known" to be a
bomb-carrier. Killing people on mere suspicion, however, makes our
democracy a sham.

Even the war in Iraq could not start on *suspicion* of WMD. It started
because there
*!was!* WMD.

--
*** A great civilization is not conquered from without until it
has destroyed itself from within. ***
- Ariel Durant 1898-1981


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