Re: pause for reflection

[Gadi Evron <ge () linuxbox org>]

Thank you for your comments.

Unrelated, looking back at this ars poetica of mine I almost puked. I 
meant it all and am happy I wrote it, but it's "too much." :)


On Mon, 6 Oct 2008, der Mouse wrote:

> > > No villain ever sees himself as the bad guy, as the saying goes.  A
> > > friend recently showed me Russian language comments written on Brian
> > > Krebs' recent Washington Post story.  In them, the posters ask: "why
> > > do you take our bread away?"
>
> That's easy: the same reason "we" "take away" the bread of the kids of
> a drug smuggler...or a hit man...or an embezzler...or any of the
> various other actions we have chosen to consider offenses worthy of
> substantial punishment: it's _punishment_.
>
> This glosses over the different values of "we" involved when offenses
> go trans-border.  But that makes it, if anything, stronger: there is
> some force to their argument if everything is entirely within their
> society, but when it spills over into another society that considers it
> unacceptable, the injured society has every right to wall itself off.
> That's in large part what being a soverign state is all about.
>
> And, that aside, it's not really "us" "taking away" "their" bread.
> Rather, it's "us" refusing to let "them" continue taking it from us.
>
> > > We can not truly comprehend what it means for some folks in Russia
> > > to no longer be able to feed their children this month.
>
> Much the same argument can be applied to the dependents of any criminal
> who is newly prevented from profiting from crime.
>
> Doesn't stop us from putting criminals away.  Nor should it, IMO.  And,
> whether these people are criminals by their own society's rules, they
> were by ours, and since they were operating in ours, our rules apply.
>
> Yes, it sucks for innocents to get caught in the middle - and, while I
> suspect most of the people actually making comments aren't very
> innocent, there doubtless are some who are - their kids, spouses, etc.
> But I consider it better than the alternatives, which amount to giving
> up on rule-of-law.
>
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