"Politicians who condemn assassination, but not any other sort of killing, are involved in a protection of their own trade, which like other trades is a conspiracy against the public....I don't see why a politician has more right in principle to be protected from violence than anyone else."

Much though I respect and love Roz, I can't help but think there's something fundamentally antidemocratic to this, a quick-and-easy dismissal of "politics" as nothing more than "a conspiracy against the public" which can very easily be pressed into service as a rationale for doing away with all that electoral nonsense and going back to direct rule by the strong. It's no coincidence that this sort of cracker-barrel anti-politician rhetoric is much beloved of right-wingers. Politicians, after all, are one of the few avenues by which little people can actually get in the way of the right of owners to do as they will.

It's right to assign extra security to the protection of elected officials, not because their lives are worth more than yours or mine, but because we place a high social value on the wishes of the people who elected them. And that's also why we dislike assassination even more than we dislike other varieties of coldblooded murder. A murder strikes at a person and at the people who knew and valued that person. An assassination of an elected official strikes at the whole body politic.

(The fact that individual politicians often do believe that their lives are worth more than yours or mine doesn't obviate the electorate's legitimate interest in their continued survival, either.)