On laws, in general [LWN.net]

On laws, in general

Posted Jul 1, 2004 11:49 UTC (Thu) by markhb (guest, #1003)
In reply to: On laws, in general by angdraug
Parent article: On dealing with Microsoft

angdraug quoted:

Laws, [Godwin] wrote, are not a product of the wisdom of our ancestors: they are the product of their passions, their timidity, their jealousies and their ambition. The remedy they offer is worse than the evils they pretend to cure. If and only if all laws and courts were abolished, and the decisions in the arising contests were left to reasonable men chosen for that purpose, real justice would gradually be evolved.

I submit that quoting anarchist propaganda falls exactly into the category of comments ESR was talking about when he wrote:

FSF-style propaganda about freedom or user's rights has its uses occasionally, but it will register on this campaign's target audience of bottom-line-fixated IT managers as irrelevant or nutty. And when you look irrelevant or nutty, you hand Microsoft a victory.

Remember: regardless of what we say about corporations, the largest swing block of voters in the USA today is relatively comfortable suburban mothers ("soccer moms"). Those mothers, taken as a group, have as their overriding priority the safety of their children, and they are perfectly happy with any reasonable restrictions on freedom (read: PATRIOT Act) that appear to support that goal. Anarchist sentiments are about as far in opposition to that as one can possibly imagine. As I used to say in my Slashdot .sig,

Those who would surrender essential liberty for a little temporary security may deserve neither, but they tend to be the majority of voters.

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On laws, in general

Posted Jul 1, 2004 15:38 UTC (Thu) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487) [Link]

I submit that quoting anarchist propaganda falls exactly into the category of comments ESR was talking about

What was quoted wasn't anarchist propaganda, it was anarchist analysis. And my impression is that LWN's audience is not "soccer moms", but mainly critically thinking IT professionals who can take an argument for its worth, without running away crying "gasp! anarchists!".

Those mothers, taken as a group, have as their overriding priority the safety of their children, and they are perfectly happy with any reasonable restrictions on freedom (read: PATRIOT Act) that appear to support that goal.

And that is the reason why anarchist analysis of laws is relevant: it demonstrates that it is not necessary to allow "soccer moms" and politicians to decide what's good for us.

Anarchist sentiments are about as far in opposition to that as one can possibly imagine.

Which further proves that these sentiments are correct. Unless you mean to say that opposition to bad laws like PATRIOT Act is wrong, of course.