Private security firms...
Turn on the "protected." Who could have imagined?
Libertarians, My Libertarians!
Cruel to be kind means that I love you . Because, while I think you are mistaken, your hearts are in the right place -- yes, even you, Silas -- unlike some people . This Breitbart fellow (discussed in the link above), by all appearances, deliberately doctored a video of Shirley Sherrod to make her remarks appear virulently racist, when they had, in fact, the opposite import. I heard that at a recent Austrian conference, some folks were talking about "Callahan's conservative turn." While that description is not entirely inaccurate, I must say that a lot of these people who today call themselves conservative give me the heebie-jeebies.
The Mexican drug cartels are a really interesting phenomenon since they have the power to rival Mexico's security forces. When I look at these things, though, I try to avoid using the labels "public" or "private", since those only make sense in a larger context. So, I'd probably call them for-profit security organizations or something like that.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine used to live in El Salvador. People in his neighborhood kept getting robbed, so they pooled their resources to hire a couple of security guys to patrol the area... only to have the security guys rob them all at knife point.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lesson here somewhere.
One of my friends bought food from a privately owned restaurant, and he got sick.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lesson here somewhere.
There sure is Bob: both states and private enterprises are populated by flawed human beings, and both screw up.
DeleteI'm beginning to suspect that labeling might have a distorting effect. For example, it seems perfectly fine to call the Pinkertons a "private security firm", but to apply that label to a clan in Somalia or a drug cartel seems off. The "private" in the phrase "private security firm" only makes sense if there is a "public" with which to contrast it against. Is this something along the lines of what you mean by rationalism?
ReplyDelete