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From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Re: (micromotives & macrobehavior)
Message-ID: <28200090@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Sep-85 19:00:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.28200090
Posted: Fri Sep 20 19:00:00 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Sep-85 07:06:27 EDT
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Nf-From: inmet!janw    Sep 20 19:00:00 1985


> [josh]
> I'd personally favor an assassination defense...

 An eminently sensible idea, which, by the way, has excellent
socialist and humanist credentials. In St. Thomas More's Utopia 
(the prototype for all the rest of them), the peace-loving
citizens of the ideal society solved in this way the problem of
foreign threat: they offered a large reward for the life of
any aggressive neighboring leader. They figured it cost less
in money, and especially in lives, than a war.

 The reason this idea is unpopular in political circles
is obvious: it is not in the interest of the rulers, who
would run a risk of dying for their country in a retaliation
attack (as JFK, perhaps, did). So they make it sound immoral.

 Actually, it is the most humane form of defense, and,
as JoSH has pointed out, a libertarian society would be
more free to practice  it.

> >[Stanley Friesen]
> > Now here comes a large army pouring over the borders from
> >next door.

> [josh]
> Which one, the glorious forces of Canadian hegemony, or the invincible
> fury of the Mexican War Machine?

 Nice sarcasm, JoSH, but not a strong argument. You wouldn't argue, 
would you, that libertarianism is only practicable in the special 
geopolitical conditions with which we are now blessed ?
 What if Mexico and Canada had already been subjugated by a 
hostile superpower ? What you would need to do is to act *in time*,
not just react, to prevent that.

 The point I am trying to make is this: libertarian foreign policy
might be private, but it could not always afford to be isolationist.
I thought it worth saying because it was my impression that there
was a streak of isolationism in libertarian thinking. I am willing
to be corrected on this.

		Jan Wasilewsky