And now they want your books…
The security people in the NY-NJ ferries want your books because they are inappropriate.
I’m going to carry around the ACLU’s number, too. I’m reading the
Iliad, and that’s all about war and rage at the authorities.
Might make me do “something.”
Books are like the Gospels: they comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Ecto blogging software
12 August 2004 at 9:43 pm.
At least the lining is, if not silver, 1000-wash-grey.
Turns out it was just some goon & not “the man” himself.
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/08/11/dd_book_reader_on_fe.html
16 August 2004 at 9:27 am.
Plu-ese. Grow up. The reality of human nature is that some people are idiots. Deal with it by dealing with it, not by crying for your surrogate parents from the ACLU to comfort you in the face of a big mysterious imagined government boogyman hiding under every bed.
16 August 2004 at 11:52 am.
Yes, but when idiots are empowered by the government and then use that power to try to deny my freedom to read whatever I want, I will fight them back with every weapon I’ve got. They’ve got the coercive power of the state; why shouldn’t I try to turn the power of the state against them? Besides, what about those people who don’t fight back? Who’s gonna stand up for their freedoms?
And Albert, it’s ironic that you talk about dealing with it and standing up for oneself, but you have left no e-mail address and hid behind Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit site, rather than leave any real identifying information about yourself.
17 August 2004 at 9:13 pm.
What does my actual identity have to do with the content of the comment? I am the comment message. It stands up for itself.
Back to the salient point. What makes you think the ferry idiot has any claim to government power? Before going off on a rant about an oppressive government and the coercive power of the state, all bad things mind you, lets establish if the ferry is or is not, in fact, a government entity.
If it is, was there a policy at work or was the idiot freelancing. (Then again if the ferry service is a government agency, the pilot that crashed into the dock last year must have been the vanguard of a murdering conspiracy that reaches all the way to Cheney and the neocons.)
Or could it be that a simple customer complaint to the idiot’s supervisor would have done the trick, remedied the situation?
I went to the movies in the local mall after 911 and the retiree working the door insisted on searching and confiscating my Borders bag. He was a cranky old man who wouldn’t let me in the movies.
I blame human nature in its manifestation as a cranky old man. You blame an all knowing alien controlled GOVERNMENT plotting against each and every one of its citizens. So I guess its a draw.
By the way, I don’t care if you stand up for yourself, just that you know where you stand.
And, incidentally, nice blog design.
And, it wasn’t nice blocking poor Albert.
17 August 2004 at 11:50 pm.
Al—-,
I block anybody who doesn’t have the wherewithal to reveal their real identity. I recognize it’s possible to get around, but it’s my space, and I can make the rules.
Your idea about human nature has some merit and I might agree. I tend to think that most cops aren’t too much different than many of the common thugs that they deal with, except for having a shield that syas they are on “our side.”
Ferries are run by the government in that area, so far as I know. I know of no privately run ferry there. And I would venture that ferry-dummy would not/could not have done or attemtpted to do what he did without the idea that his “official” position gave him the coercive power to make his attempt. Had he just been a random citizen, I’d put a small amount of cash on the line tha he wouldn’t have tried.
I don’t believe that the government is always out to get us (but I think the current administration has slippery and dangerous understanding of civil liberties), and I don’t think I’ve given that impression. And I don’t think the the *government* did the actions in question. But without the implied threat of state power and the Weberian “legitimate monopoly of violence”, the situation we saw would not have happened. So ferry-dummy was inappropriately screened byt whatever agents of the state that he was working for.
18 August 2004 at 12:30 pm.
But really, who among us truly knows who they are. Identities are only public personas. Masks. Superficialities.
And of course it’s your space with your rules. But that doesn’t make me wrong in saying that it’s not nice to block anonymous old contrarians.
So. Back to the ferry. Cops and criminals, priests and sinners, government employees and non-government employees. You’re right, they’re all made of the same raw materials. They’re all collections of humans. Some good, some bad, most well-intentioned, but hopelessly incompetent: simply a set of replicating, carbon based variables.
Are some human collections more coercively efficient? Sure. But the important thing is that they are still only a collection of humans (with all that that implies (see above)) and not some kind of super-evolved race of Darth Vader-like all-knowing and controlling overloards.
(Sheez, it was just a middle aged, overweight, ferry service employee from Amboy who probably lives with his mother. Let’s get a grip here.)
To insist that *they* are very strong implies that we are very weak.
If as kids, we simply got up in the middle of the night and looked under the bed, we would know that there was no monster. Sometimes the looking is the scary part.
It’s your space, so please have the last word. I hope I’ve made my point, but, well, nevermind.