Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
It's not an attack. It's a dismissal of an overly-paranoid, content-lacking cliche disguised as an argument.
Hey... now we're getting somewhere!
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I don't think that anyone has a right to accost me and demand identity papers if I am not involved in an activity that is: a. a priviledged use of a collective property (i.e. driving) or b. criminal or dangerous to those around me. If am standing on a street corner, minding my own business, I should not have to submit to being accosted by a person in a uniform, regardless of what I am wearing (i.e. my thowb), what I am reading (the Qur'an, the Origin of Species, the Communist Manifesto, all of which I appreciate), or the color of my skin (or the skins of my family, which run to the milk chocolate side). I don't need someone in a badge channeling Zachary Taylor or Daniel Pipes and inconveniencing me or mine. As a matter of ethics, I do not believe they are entitled to so. As a matter of constitutional law, I doubt it is legal. Do I think there is a conspiracy to bring about a totalitarian government? No. Do I think that the tendency of power is to accumulate? Yes. So I oppose the accumulation of power, whether it be in the hands of local officers of the law or Federal or State bureaucrats. Instead, I support the decentralization and democratization of power as much as history, psychology, and technology permit.
Luqman