I think that's a false dichotomy

[Robert J. Hansen]

> And, with all due respect, for that reason I think policy should not be
> determined by people who have been exposed to a very unbalanced amount of
> horrible people. Constantly being confronted by the worst scum of the gutter
> skews your view of human behaviour.

There are two ways to interpret this, Peter, one which I think you
intended and one which people might infer you meant.  So I both don't
disagree, and I vehemently disagree.  :)

Yes, it would be a mistake for policy to be determined by those who've
been down in the mud with this crap.  It would be deeply antidemocratic,
in fact.  This decision belongs to the people, not to an extremely small
subset of the people with a (perhaps-understandably) skewed worldview.

But that doesn't mean policy shouldn't be *informed* by our experiences.
 Laws that are made without consultation with the people who ultimately
have to live under those laws (whether being subjected to them, or being
made to enforce them) tend to be either ineffective, draconian, or both.

> Safety and liberty can't both be maximized, it's a trade-off.

True and false.  It's not necessarily a zero-sum game.  There are some
enhancements in liberty that also lead to enhancements in safety.  I
personally think we do ourselves a disservice when we think of it as a
zero-sum game.  I think we should be working as hard as we can to
enhance both simultaneously.