James A. Donald wrote:
That is it. This is the ghost of cypherpunks.
Or maybe its counterpart fossil.
As GK Chesterton said about most nominal Christianity in the world
in his day - the original had rotted away leaving a space of the
same shape and size. Like the impression of a leaf between two
layers of mud which harden into stone leaving a fossil that has
something of the shape and pattern of the original but none of its
content.
Cypherpunks always was a self contradiction - a
political group pushing a fundamentally non political
attack upon the state, and thus upon the very existence
of politics.
Do you really think that politics only exists where there is a
state? I'd have thought the opposite is true. Most states
actively prevent most people participating in politics. And even
the more benign ones relieve people of the responsibility of doing
politics - or maybe the realisation that what they are doing *is*
politics. Where there is no state everyone is a politician, all
the time, and all public acts are overtly political.
