Subject:
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Re: More on Airport security.
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 12 Oct 2001 06:37:30 GMT
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Viewed:
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839 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> No. The person causing the risk or problem should pay to ameliorate it or
> guard against it. No matter who it is that benefits. Anything else is
> malfeasance.
Larry, this is a stark example of how your Libertarianism takes ideas out of
context. You have some idea that rights and risks adhere to individuals. But
that is no longer the essential principle in our present context. Rights
have already been violated by coercion, and it is time for government to
deploy men with guns.
The risk is man-made, between terrorists who make the standing threat to
airlines and the rest of us. To say that it is the airline's problem, that
they should bear the cost or stop flying, is to say it's not the role of
government to protect citizens against crime.
It's essentially a capitulation: to say that we (as a country) will allow
this threat to destroy the airline's property by coercion.
It's essentially the same treatment "we" gave Random House by providing no
assistance to Salman Rushdie or his American publisher when the Ayatollah
put a death sentence on him. At that time, Random House of America asked its
government to do something to protect its executives from
assassination--nothing was forthcoming. Random House paid for its own
security *against foreign governments* and was left to hang by the rest of
us. Of course, if they want to exercise their freedom of speech by
publishing books, they should bear the risks of assassination, right? Or
stop publishing books.
Salman Rushdie was forced to go into hiding for years (thank you Britain for
that much.) On September 18, he was forced to cancel scheduled talks in New
York. (Random House, fully cowed, issued a statement saying nobody wanted to
hear the ideas of authors at a time like this.)
To say that security and risk from terrorists is incumbent on the
individuals is unprincipled. (Or maybe it would be "consistent" with today's
pragmatism.)
You might as well say that it's up to the YMCA to fight the Ayatollah if it
wants to have cultural events, and it's not the chief executive's problem.
This is the root of why Libertarianism, that mish mash of borrowed phrases,
equals anarchy.
Airports, airlines, and government must continue to work out how to protect
the individual rights of everybody involved.
-Erik
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: More on Airport security.
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| (...) Which property of the airlines are you talking? Their god given right to fly above people? (...) The essential difference between these two is this: There IS a right to freedom of speech, but there is NO right to freedom of flight. (...) If (...) (23 years ago, 15-Oct-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: More on Airport security.
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| (...) Doesn't matter who benefits. What matters is who is RESPONSIBLE. And that is the airlines. If they're not flying, no potential weapons... So the airlines should pay, or the passengers deriving benefit from travel and thus causing the risk to (...) (23 years ago, 12-Oct-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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