X-Message-Number: 419 From att!uunet!ininx!jkreznar Mon Sep 2 04:18:12 1991 Date: Mon, 2 Sep 91 01:13:51 PDT From: uunet!ininx!jkreznar ([John E. Kreznar]) To: uunet!att!whscad1!kqb Subject: CRYONICS The tragedy of political government Kevin's steering of this list away from political discussion deserves respect. The generally high quality of postings here owes a lot to his efforts. But the dissent from his position has left some ambiguity. With some trepidation, I attempt here some response to what has been said. (However, with Kevin on vacation again, this may be moot. All I have to do is issue the magic word ``CRYONICS'' in the subject line. While the cat's away, the mice can play! :-) [ My apologies! In my rush to take off for vacation I failed to completely activate the automatic mode, leaving several messages to be mailblasted tonight. (It was one of those weeks.) Anyway, it wouldn't be fair to promise temporary automatic mailblasting and sneakily do just the opposite... - KQB ] "Allen J. Lopp" <> writes > Just exactly how do YOU propose we deal with the situation if the Riverside > District Attorney comes to the Alcor facility with an arrest warrant for the > illegal disposition of human remains, accompanied by a fully armed swat team > from the Riverside Police Department? Or, if that situation is hopeless to a > pure libertarian, exactly how does a pure libertarian, starting with the > present state of affairs, make precautions to ensure that that scenario > ABSOLUTELY CANNOT come about? I shall ignore your emphasized ``ABSOLUTELY CANNOT'' demand, because you surely are jesting. I also ignore your ``exactly'' demand, because I don't know _exactly_ how to do it. Moreover, robustness tends to suffer from excess exactitude, and robustness is a more important consideration here. With these qualifications, here are some thoughts off the top of my head. The theme is decentralization. Dora Kent is probably more secure against political threat now than any of the patients at the Alcor facility, if my understanding of the current situation is correct. And the technical threat to her survival is probably hardly compromised at all. I think that the Dora Kent case stands as a fine example of ONE way to protect against attacks by voters and other criminals. Does Alcor really need a specific fixed base? Could it be that resources now squandered on the political battles might better be spent on a MOBILE suspension capability, with all the defense options that implies? Is the proposed new Alcor facility really a wise decision? In this age of electronic communication, sustaining a coherent organization is no longer contingent on physical proximity of its members. Bigfoot dewars can be at scattered locations, with the implied additional cost of LN2 distribution probably falling well below that of lawyer's fees, and of much more certain outcome. I was gratified to see the letter from Paul Wakfer in the September _Cryonics_, which just arrived here. He says ``I wish we could take Alcor `underground' as I and many other anarchists have done with their business and personal activities. I would ask that other Alcor members also give some thought to this possibility.'' The objective is _survival_, not political acceptance. > I am talking about solutions that a small group of people can put into effect, > not something like re-structuring the entire United States government. Smallness of the group is precisely WHY it's wasteful to fight the political battle and WHY non-political approaches offer greater promise. The first mammals survived not by confronting the dinosaurs, but by evading them. > ...to keep cryonics available to ourselves---whether it remains legal or not. Cryonics IS legal. Never mistake the pompous pronouncements of pretentious politicians or their sycophantic constituents for LAW. Law is common law. Pronouncements not consistent with the golden rule ``do not do onto others what you would not nave them do onto you'' cannot be law. --- Let me use this occasion to also complete another response I had suspended when Kevin first discouraged political dialog here. writes: > The authors of the U.S. Constitution intended that the government > should only have the authority explicitly granted to it by the > Constitution. Unfortunately, current de facto practice is that the > government has any and all powers not expressly forbidded to it by the > Constitution, plus some of the forbidded ones, as well. It certainly has. This was lucidly recognized as far back as 1869 by Lysander Spooner, whose conclusion to his _No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority_ states ``But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain---that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.'' Lysander Spooner (1808--1887) was a Massachusetts lawyer noted for his vigorous and brilliant opposition to the encroachment of the State upon the liberty of the individual. The first sentence of the above-named essay is: ``The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation.'' He goes on to explain in great legal detail how the U.S. constitution may have bound a few men who signed it in the eighteenth century, but they're all dead now and they did not attempt to, and in any case could not have, bound their posterity. _No Treason_ is available from Laissez Faire Books, 942 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 (*), North America, 1-415-541-9780. Laissez Faire accepts transfer orders drawn on gold accounts with Anthony L. Hargis & Co. A Spooner index and further information is available from Carl Watner's _The Voluntaryists_, P.O. Box 1275, Gramling, South Carolina 29348 (*), North America. The Voluntaryists accepts transfer orders drawn on gold accounts with Anthony L. Hargis & Co. (*) Place names are for location purposes only; author acknowledges no political authority. > If your theory that the legislature would have no power over cryonics > but for our approaching them with requests for legislative protection > were true, then the criminalization of cryonics in British Columbia > would never have occurred. A good solution to this is to _not be in_ ``British Columbia''. British Columbia, like ``The United States'', or ``California'', is an association of people. One may join or not join. Claims by some members of these organizations that their jurisdiction is geographically defined are just that: claims. The truth is that a person is no more bound by pronouncements of these organizations than he is by any other organization which he has not willfully joined, such as for example the Rotary Club. By playing in their sandbox (which is actually more like a _tar-pit_), you nominate yourself as a member. Petitioning their leadership is certainly playing in their sandbox. Attempts by members of these organizations to invade what is obviously your personal business should be treated like attempts by cockroaches to invade your kitchen. You don't attempt to reason with them, because they are unreasonable. They prove this by the very fact of their invasiveness. Rather, you get your head out of the sand and defend yourself against them as best you can. _Joining_ them is a poor defense, to say nothing of the fact that you merely _add_ to their pretensions of power by so doing. Cryonics has been likened by some to a religion. I don't believe it. But the more emphasis I see within the cryonics community on trying to gain popular approval for its philosophy, the weaker becomes my case. Gaining popular approval is a waste of much-needed resources. To borrow a word from another list, let the _entropians_ do their thing; that's their business. We, who recognize the importance and potential of defeating our mortality, have more pressing concerns. It has been said, in response to my writings, that I have the blood of cryonicists on my hands by taking the stands I'm taking. Please be informed that those who empower the primary non-technical obstacle to _my_ survival, political government, are risking getting _my_ blood on _their_ hands! Honesty and forthrightness probably demand that I confess here in public that I am not a cryonicist. But one (minor) reason that I cling instead to my 30+ year campaign to migrate myself to silicon is that such migration can be relatively immune from political attack, simply because it can be low-profile. However, this does not diminish my interest in cryonics, or the survival of those who, like myself, recognize mortality as the most important obstacle to unlimited personal development, an obstacle which is just now becoming avoidable. Relations among people to be by mutual consent, or not at all. | Voting in government elections, or petitioning government, or willfully | | accepting government ``benefits'' when it's feasibly avoidable (thereby | | generating demand for taxation), accelerate the supplanting of personal | | choice by collective dictate, making these most serious crimes against | | humanity. ---John E. Kreznar, , uunet!ininx!jkreznar | It got so cold last winter, I saw a voter with his hand in his own pocket! Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=419