From: c1741@moncol.monmouth.edu (MICHAEL CARSON)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Freedom of Religion as well as everything else
Keywords: Civil Rights, Pagan
Date: 25 Aug 92 17:49:55 GMT
Organization: Monmouth College, W. Long Branch, N.J.  07764

In article <2A9A618F.7671@orion.oac.uci.edu> cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>
>I don't know about this one.  Here is Uhmurka, people are fucking BORN
>with guns, and we are an international joke in Europe because of it.
>DOesn't make US any less susceptible to mind-control.  Hell, three
>little TV commercials picked the last president of the country!
>
>Blessings,
>Janis 
	But there is a difference:  Here people are not used to working in
military situations, and they are rarely carring weapons to equal the
military's.  It has been often said that the first step in making a 
dictatorship is taking away the people's ability to fight back.  I don't
think it is the first step, but it IS an important one.
	Example: the LA riots.

	The people in sections of LA saw something they didn't like:
Cops not getting jailed after the "senseless" beating of Rodney King..
Incomplete data, but it was all most people knew.  What happened?
They took to the streets.  Disorganized violence ensued.  The organized
police and National Guard shut it down.
	Now what would have happened if it wasn't a group of disorganized
people randomly burning and looting, but a local militia, trained to fight,
and especially to defend that chunk of land, carring weapons equal to the
armaments used by those sent to shut it down?  It would have been a much
bloodier mess.  The governemnt would had needed much more manpower, using
numbers to overwhelm familiarity with the terrain.  The cost would have
been higher, and the government would have looked bad in the international
eye.  Consequently the government would be need to be more subtle in their
control.  The fight then goes to the information guys: people (journalists,
hackers, whoever) who seem to be compelled to get information out to the
general public.  There are still people fighting the opression, its
just a different battle field.  Right now the people are in a position to
loose both fights.  Maybe we need to change that.
	Granted, this is a gross oversimplification, as it assumes a 
duality of government and people, ignoring the fact that the former is
comprised of the latter, and assumes that the vast majority of people
are so used to following authority that they would electrocute somebody
if told to by a person with enough seeming authority (yes, I can cite
a source for this, no I don't have it with me).  The idea that government
and large corporations  take on a life of their own independant of the
people "running" them is best left for another time/place.
	Blammo, you actually READ all that?  :)

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|o| Of Course I speak  |      michael carson       | Carpe Diem, Man.        |o|
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