Lazarus Shrugged
Something kept tickling the back of my mind and memory this week, and then it came to me. The following excerpt is from "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long", a kind of intermission section in Robert Heinlein's sci-fi classic, "Time Enough For Love", which detailed the adventures of the oldest living (2,000 years+) human, the afore-mentioned Lazarus.
Not that I agree completely, but it did make me smile. I get the sense that those willing to resort to violence to protest the state are not much different from those who say they read Playboy for the articles.
Those who refuse to support and defend a state have no claim to protection by that state. Killing an anarchist or a pacifist should not be defined as “murder” in a legalistic sense. The offense against the state, if any, should be “Using deadly weapons inside city limits,” or “Creating a traffic hazard,” or “Endangering bystanders,” or other misdemeanor. However, the state may reasonably place a closed season on these exotic asocial animals whenever they are in danger of becoming extinct. An authentic buck pacifist has rarely been seen off Earth, and it is doubtful that any have survived the trouble there...regrettable, as they had the biggest mouths and the smallest brains of any of the primates. The small-mouthed variety of anarchist has spread through the Galaxy at the very wave front of the Diaspora; there is no need to protect them. But they often shoot back.
Not that I agree completely, but it did make me smile. I get the sense that those willing to resort to violence to protest the state are not much different from those who say they read Playboy for the articles.
