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RE: Mexican Cartels have the moral high ground over the U.S. and I am safe living around them. You are too.
We should not admire the cartels in any way. Violence is anti-NAP and disgusting. People should have the right to buy AND sell drugs. However, you are right to compare the US government to the cartels because they are indeed immoral.
@porcupine305 I am a student and strict follower of NAP. I don't "admire" the cartels because they use violence. I made that clear by explaining their immorality. I do like the cartels and prefer their way of governing compared to the rest of the world's governments. And I do respect them for protecting and not caging their own citizens. Big love to you though. I'm glad you are a NAPer.
Sounds to me like you're applying the NAP to the messy reality we're living in. This messy reality we live in must account for war(both cybernetic and physical) between multiple evils. Cybernetic war(war governed by cybernetic principles) is often called "politics" if it remains nonviolent or mostly-nonviolent. Hence the statement, "Politics is war by other means." I believe this is true.
The outcome of politics is often a bland, immense blanket of highly-localized oppression or "localized threat of aggression" resulting in a tyranny that induces people to act against their own self-interest. Historian RJ Rummel (RIP) gathered a ton of data indicating that totalitarian repression resulting in democide has killed and harmed far more people than outright war. See: http://hawaii.edu/powerkills/
In asking whether the US government or the cartels are more evil, I'd have to say that they are both roughly equivalent, because they are cybernetic systems that mutually-strengthen each other. However, the most morally-culpable party is the U.S. voter and willing taxpayer.
As Thoreau said:
"A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now."