Personally Responsible
Sam Aurelius Milam III
U.S.
soldiers didn't go overseas to play ping pong, but to kill people.
That being the case, they have an obligation to be in the right.
Being in the wrong can arise from either malice or ignorance.
Anyone
who professes to exercise free will, anyone who claims to be a member of
a free and open society, cannot pass the buck of blame to his leaders.
A slave must obey mindlessly, but a free man must consider first.
Any American who goes overseas to engage in war, and who believes himself
to occupy the latter condition, rather than the former, has an obligation
to first educate himself. He must study at least three things:
international law, the principles of liberty, and the history and causes
of the conflict. If he studies those things, then he will learn at
least three lessons. He will learn that noninterference in the internal
affairs of a sovereign state is among the most important of the principles
of international law. He will learn that the presumption of innocence
is among the most fundamental of the principles of liberty. He will
learn that, at this particular time in history, the U.S. government is
the most arrogant and hypocritical terrorist organization on the face of
the earth. If an American soldier goes to war without learning those
lessons, then he goes to war in ignorance. If he learns the lessons
and goes to war anyway, then he goes to war with malice. An Iraqi
who is killed either by ignorance or by malice is just as dead, either
way. The man who did the deed, if his action was unjustified, is
just as guilty whether he did it in ignorance or out of malice.
The
war is reprehensible. Those who are fighting it, whether from ignorance
or from malice, must be deemed responsible for the consequences of their
actions. If I support them, then I must also support their actions.
I cannot do that. Therefore, I do not support them.![10x5 Page Background GIF Image](../../Images/10x5_Page_Background.gif)
Stray Thoughts
Sam Aurelius Milam III
Hybrid
Scam I don't remember the exact number, but it seems to me that the
car makers are claiming something like 80 miles per gallon for their new
hybrid vehicles. Really?
It's
a fact of thermodynamics that the more energy conversions there are in
a process, then the less thermodynamically efficient the overall process
will be. So, consider hybrid vehicles. If energy is converted
from chemical energy in gasoline to electrical energy in a wire, and then
converted from electrical energy in a wire to chemical energy in a battery,
and then converted from chemical energy in a battery to electrical energy
in a wire, and then converted from electrical energy in a wire to kinetic
energy in the vehicle, the process will be less efficient, due to all those
energy conversions. On the other hand, if energy is converted from
chemical energy in gasoline directly to kinetic energy in the vehicle,
there are fewer conversions and the overall process will be more efficient.
So, if they can make a hybrid vehicle run 80 miles on a gallon of gasoline,
then they should be able to use the same engine, the same gasoline, and
the same vehicle, eliminate the hybrid stuff, and make the vehicle run
maybe 150 miles or so on the gallon of gasoline.
Severe
Acute Government Syndrome I've heard occasional rumors, over the
years, that AIDS escaped from a government development program. When
I first heard of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, that's the first thought
that occurred to me. Consider that people have been contending with
biological agents for millennia. Germs aren't anything new except
maybe for those rumored "new diseases", created in the government labs.
By the way, the government labs aren't rumors. Their existence is
well documented. Regarding the old standby diseases, we don't need
a Department of Homeland Stupidity to protect us from them. We just
need to wash our hands often, cook our meat thoroughly, keep the water
clean, be careful
![Arrow Right](../../Images/Arrow_Right_Small.gif)
frontiersman@ida.net |
Frontiersman,
479 E. 700 N., Firth, Idaho 83236
Also see Pharos at http://www.ida.net/users/pharos/ |
April 2003
Page 1
|
|