Sans Authoritas wrote:
"Our" threats? Who are you talking about? Do you consider yourself a mere cell in the body politic of the U.S. government? I don't make any threats. The U.S. government does. I don't have any troops. The U.S. government does. The individuals who comprise the U.S. government do not speak for me; nor do they speak for millions of other sane people.
lacoochee wrote:
Funny, you live in a representative democracy so in fact actually the government does speak for you. I did not like it when Clinton was the President, but he was still our President. I never thought of him as someone else's president as if he were from strange blue nation North of the Mason-Dixon line.
When the individuals in government slaughtered over 350,000 civilians during the bombings of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it did not do so on my behalf. Nor did I approve of it. When the individuals in government slaughtered over 80 men, women and children at Waco, it was not acting on my behalf, nor was I vicariously acting
through the government. I was not a cause of the action. I flatly condemned the action. Simply put, I had absolutely
nothing to do with it.
I live in the world, not a government. Government influences my life, yes. However, it is, without hyperbole, absolutely insane to say that because people merely live within the sphere of influence of a particular entity, that therefore that entity "acts on behalf of" those people, or that they are a "part" of that entity. We live under the influence of the environment, too. I am not a part of a tsunami that slaughters people. I am in
relation to the environment, but I am not an agent of its actions. It is insanity to suggest that if we do not vote, but only pay taxes that we are forced to, that we are part of its workings.
If people want to put up their artificial worlds up and call them "states" or "nations," they're free to do so. But leave me out. I don't live within other people's mental problems. And I certainly don't voluntarily take part in the foul actions their mental illnesses lead them to perform.
-Sans Authoritas