[lbo-talk] Re: Yobs in uniform

[Jim Devine]

WS seems to be embracing the Hobbesian perspective, i.e., that we need
the Police (and not the one that once included Sting). We must give
the State the monopoly of the control and use of the means of
violence, in order to avoid the war of each against all, the world in
which we are all nasty, brutish, and short. (That doesn't mean I can't
have my Uzi. Rather, it means that I must have a state-granted
license.)

That perspective has a point, but so does the Lockean critique (which
goes back to Plato, if not earlier). Power corrupts. Following
Rousseau, democratic control over the State is required.

Doug: > > Can you acknowledge that the TBL sometimes acts as a violent
mob itself?

On 8/22/05, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: 
> Of course.  Any organization has a potential for corruption and abuse - even
> the Communist Party.
> 
> The point I was arguing was directed at a silly anti-institutionalism and
> populism manifested, inter alia, by knee-jerk hatred of government and its
> agencies, especially law enforcement.  I think I stated that quite
> explicitly in several missives in this thread while you were on vacation -
> no need for repeating it.

-- 
Jim Devine
"Blessed are the pizza-makers." [explanation: I suggested this slogan
to a local pizza parlor. They posted in on their sign. They didn't
know that this was a blow against the local Hope Chapel, which posts
religious slogans, often fundamentalist ones.]