"Why We Can't Wait"

(This just out in e-mail to "Elliot", who commented here)

Elliot,

I don't know who you are, but I'm writing to applaud the fact that -- in that comment at QandO -- you pointed out that there are real live people getting killed in bits and pieces every day while these people press for "negotiation" with the killers. I live in a place -- central New York State -- that is just filled with people like your "widows" and every possible variation on that theme of individual people: with dreams and work, trying their best to hold on to everything they can produce, and whose original American brilliance is visible only through the shadows that darken their souls all the time, now. These people are not theoretical abstractions. They are not variables to be plugged into someone's ethical calculator at the "margins". They are dying by the day, and it's just heartbreaking to watch them trying relentlessly under the huge sum of murder that presses them like a rock, which was man-made. This is not some glacial accident of metaphysics: it's deliberate expropriation of the very hours of their lives by others without the least moral claim to any of it.

The other night, I went to a birthday party for a friend. At one point, I observed conversation in a room full of fourteen adults talking about a new law which will permit one local county to begin collecting income taxes from people who work there but reside in other surrounding counties. These people are not political philosophers. All they know is that there is nothing American about what is happening to them. A couple of them were able to take blind-stabs at some of the consequences of a move like this: projecting impacts on local employment patterns, etc. But that was as far as they could go with it, and it was about as far as they were interested to examine the thing. The general sensation at the conclusion was "hoplessness". Something like: "It's just the way it is, and there is nothing that anyone can do about it." But the bitterness in that room was fearsome.

And, now, if they ever happen to read the neolibertarians, they'll be counseled with patience for negotiation.

If ever there was a time for moral leadership, this is it, and it is nowhere in sight.

And people keep getting killed.

It's important to keep this fact crystal-clear right in front of everyone, and it's far too rare to see it happening the way you did it.

Well done, sir.