--Tim May is the perfect example why vigilante justice is generally considered to be a bad thing -- stupid assholes like Tim May spout off & take action based on paranoia instead of facts & principles of anarchy instead of justice and innocent parties get hurt.
Talk is cheap. Actions are done more carefully. Tim implied he would kill stoolies that shopped him to the police, not that stoolies had shopped him to the police. Indeed, the one may be connected to the other -- the absence of stoolies may well be connected to the presence of hot talk.
And there is nothing immoral in discussing the fact that actions may have consequences.
Take the work camps described in Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch." (Or, of course, the Nazi extermination camps. Or the U.S. concentration camps in Gitmo.) The camp management clearly sought a docile, "policeman inside," stoolie-oriented system where informers and "capos" (those who cooperate and act as de facto guards) see no reason NOT to be stoolies and capos.
But merely the threat that stoolies and capos will be found with their throats slit is often enough to deter such behaviors.
My point is that if librarians even think there is some small chance that someone they narc out to Big Brother will kill them or their families, such stoolie behavior may drop precipitously.
--Tim May
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." --Robert A. Heinlein
