Keen, have you ever heard of a situation where a parent, no matter how good a job he's done of raising his kid, finds himself in a situation where the kid's done something really bad and it's become necessary to put your hand on the kid's shoulder to make the point just how bad this is? That little pressure of your palm next to his neck is in both your minds an extreme physical measure, compared with the talkings-to you've administered in the past and you both know it. It's as close as you'll ever come to hitting the kid but, again, in your minds, things have come to the pretty pass that made it exigent you make your point.

Now, what about the kids of people who aren't nearly the good parent you are? We're surrounded by them, other people's kids, and can you deny that it seems like many don't listen to anything but a good smack in the kisser because that's either the way they were raised or that's just the way some people seem to be.

Okay, so much, for now, for not hitting people; what about whose stuff is whose?

You were born, probably, in the '50s; you don't say and it's not really important exactly when. Presumably, you were born in this country or raised here; you don't say and, again, it's not important. It's likely, though, that some time after you started to walk, your parents told you not to play in the street. (Maybe they even smacked you one time when you didn't listen.) It wasn't until years later, maybe, that you wondered how that street got there?

It's not a natural outcropping, Keen.

Somebody put it there and that somebody was us, way back when. An integral part of our parents' parents agreeing to get together and live was fixing up the place so it was livable. Streets and roads were early on the list as were places to do the public business. Places, you know, like courts? Like the Supreme Court, where you beat Waubaunsee County when they messed with you? Streets and roads and public buildings and lots of other things situated on land that, in a large number of cases, was somebody else's stuff. It doesn't take a lawyer or nuclear physicist to figure out that somebody had to give (or get smacked) and the world's full of stories of givers who didn't take kindly to the notion. Guys just like you.

Now, instead of typing forever on what could turn into a long, philosophical rambling about all of this stuff, I'm going to stop and ask you: unless each and every person in the state thinks and acts just like you and is as smart as you are (at least), what makes you think that you'll ever get things working the way you want--short of having yourself appointed dictator?

Your libertarianism, how is getting that to work going to be any less insurmountable a problem than the one the Communists faced in Russia almost 100 years ago and how's it going to turn out any better, in practice, when you have to concede that mere changes in government form or economic form, imposed on a populace that hasn't changed an iota, are doomed?

I can guarantee you that when you come to take my stuff, I resist and you smack me, I'm not going to like it.

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Letter: Give Libertarians a look