OFF: CLONE

[M Holmes]

Chris Bates writes:

> Martin wrote:
>
> > Do I detect an oversimplification here?  You are quite right - people do
> > the killing, but is it on their own initiative?  Was the First World War,
> > for instance, the result of mass psychosis.  On the scale that was being
> > discussed, it is politicians, and therefore the state, that does the
> > killing and whose hands drip with the blood of the innocent.
>
> Killing is always done by individuals not by states. The state is
> simply an abstraction, a way of sharing collective responsibilities.

That's true where the State is voluntary and you can say "I'm
contracting out of this war". That's kinda unusual though.

> Look at any genocide and you will see that whilst some form of
> authority initiates the killing it is continued and magnified by
> individuals. In both Rwanda and former Yugoslavia tribal killings
> require no state intervention.

Sometimes this is true. The Tasmanians were completely wiped out
(Genocide with a capital G) simply by the state offering a bounty on scalps.
Individuals clearly volunteered. However, in Stalin's Russia, if you
didn't "volunteer" to do as you were told, you were off to the gulag
with the other non-volunteers.

To pretend that the state is some kind of voluntary fiction involving
mutual cooperation is facetious in the extreme. The test of this is a
simple "If I say "No!" and refuse to pay taxes towards this, do they
accept this?" If the answer is "yes" then it's as you say. If there's
somewhere like that, please let me know.

> IMO the greatest threat that we face to our way of life in the UK
> is the increasing refusal of individuals to take responsibility for
> anything. Give our forefathers their due, they were honourable
> enough to stand up and take the blame occasionally.

Amen to that.

> Chris

FoFP