<...Tom, anyone who admits to wanting to shoot Reagan is a bit off the beam - in more ways than one.

For all you know its John "Bowser" Hinckley who's posting here.



Actually, this is a little unfair. As I recall, the original reference was to the observation of Presidential helicopters flying in his area and how easy it WOULD be to shoot one down if one were so inclined. I do not recall Bowser ever actually WANTING to shoot one down. A small but important difference.

I know there is a shortage of pi--ing contests on these boards - but you're probably wasting time here. These boards are beginning to look like the Tom-Bow pow-wows.

I do sometimes worry that I am, to put it mildly, overexposed on this board. I should probably suppress my instinct to get my two cents worth in on everything. I also have a hard time leaving obvious errors and stereotypes hanging without addressing them. I do know there are a number of people I wish would post more than they do. Bowser shouldn't have to hold down the fort as the Loyal Opposition all by himself.

There seems to be a huge resistance to the concept of full individual political liberty, or libertarianism, but somehow people just seem to drop naturally into authoritarianism. This may be cultural, but...

There may be another reason for this, and this is just a wildass theory of mine: Despite the illusion that evolution tends to develop a species to be ideally suited to its environment, in real life species often carry useless or even negative baggage from previous steps that has not quite fallen away. Intelligence is a very recent phenomenon, allowing the human species to differentiate as individuals to adapt the environment to themselves. Very successful. The best use of intelligence requires the individual freedom that libertarian societies provide. Unfortunately, there is still one heck of a lot of ape heirarchy instinct still hanging on in the human psyche--that part of you that makes you want to either boss the other apes around or be bossed around by the top ape. The human intelligence needs libertarianism. The monkey brain is most comfortable in an authoritarian situation. This Catch-22 may be why most human societies are in constant tension between these two forces. Just a thought.