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Politics : To be a Liberal,you have to believe that..... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (4757)	10/30/1999 5:07:00 PM
From: Merritt	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6418

Lizzie, until shown otherwise, I disagree with your premise of there being more murders in cities around the turn of the century (and before) than at present. The reason murders had so much publicity then, was, IMHO, because they were such dramatic departures from the norm. Corruption, absolutely...was it as great as today???...I don't know. After all, who had ever heard of a U.S. president having accepted monies from a foreign government? One hopes that is the ultimate corruption. <<Rampant corruption within a society with heavy religious undertones.>> Are you trying to say that there was a connection? Perhaps there was...perhaps religion became more prominent because people realized that a morality had to be better established to combat the corruption. <<Some catastrophes like the Spanish Influenza epidemic were made much, much worse because there was no infrastructure to step in and do what was necessary without economic justification.>> You're making an assumption that the then current state of the art was capable of dealing with such an epidemic (there is considerable doubt as to whether, with today's advances, we could successfully contain an outbreak of a mutant virus, no matter how much money we were to throw at it), and that the "infrastructure" will work and be properly applied. I have personal experience that differs. In 1957 I was stationed at USNTC San Diego during an outbreak of the Asian flu...17 people died on base, and one couldn't receive medical treatment unless they had a temperature of 104, or above. I was in a company of 30 men...at one time there were only two of us that were not in the dispensary, however we were required to maintain watches, attend classes, participate in drills, police the areas, and eat in groups at the mess hall as though we were at full complement...even though we were also sick (I ran a temp of between 102 and 103.8 for better than a week). Bureaucratic maladministration isn't confined to any era. Please don't misunderstand me, I don't (for the most part) long for those "good old days." There's never been a time as good as we'd like to remember.<g> But while I do feel we've made progress in some areas, I don't think we've made positive progress, across the board, in our treatment of each other. FWIW, I agree with you that some of the Libertarian positions seem Draconian.