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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nihil who wrote (78656)	4/22/2000 9:20:00 AM
From: nihil	Respond to of 108807

(cont) If you consider the number of countries living under fascist or state socialism or the numbers of people the curve is down. If you could calculate the average severity of fascist regimes, the curve is also down. If you could measure the degree of personal freedom of the populace, with Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finnish, UK, Netherlands, Canada, Germany somewhere near the top, the average level of personal freedom is increasing, especially in the non-fascist, democratic, and protodemocratic states. In the United States we are making, I believe, some progress. Politically, we are freer than ever. I don't believe we are spied upon and bugged nearly as much as formerly, but I haven't seen my FBI files recently, so I can't be sure (but at least I can FOI them if I wish, and that is an advance. Of course, I've not had a federal job for many years, and I am not of Chinese ancestry. I sit here and see Hawaiian Nationalists hang horse dung leis around a senator's neck, and demand federal financing of their secession movement, so I may think we are politically free, but maybe not. I've lived long enough to see NATO planes bomb the Serbs out of Kossovo. I live in a state that has a low murder rate, a large majority of people of color, a Filipino-American governor (there not many of those around), and no death penalty. Most of the discrimination suits are won by whites. We argue all the time. Remove the pagan gods from in front of school. What dialect of Hawaiian shall be taught in the school. Should pidgen be spoken. Can a hapa Japanese girl run for Chrysanthemum Queen? Did skinheads (one from our elite high school now off at college in Massachusetts) desecrate the National Memorial Cemetary of the Pacific? This one delights me. I have always argued that it was much cheaper and more probable of rehavbilitation to send juvenile criminals to Harvard ($40,000 a year) than to keep them in our luxury youth prison hostel ($375,000 a year!). Now it looks as if we may be able to test this hypothesis. When I look at Hawaii now (very possibly the best and most civilized society in the world) and compare it with what it was a hundred years or more ago I am astounded at human progress in this small, special place. When an old man as I can write this at 3 in the morning, he might appear to have been smoking something really good. No. Not a bit. I'm just grooving on democracy.