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

To: Neocon who wrote (85763)	8/19/2000 5:52:35 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

I am not a libertarian, but I agree with them that freedom means nothing if it does not mean that one is largely able to dispose of one's assets as one thinks fit, including through testament. Therefore, the bar to substantial interference with economic choices should be high, although I do not think it is absolute. Among the most intimate of transactions is that between doctor and patient. Therefore, I think that anyone who supported Clintoncare, which would have involved substantial penalties for private transactions, is an extremist, since the "health care crisis" was not of sufficient magnitude to lead to such measures. Similarly, the idea of self- government means little if more local forms of government are not respected. Municipalities and states allow those with the greatest concern with local issues to have the strongest voice in decision making, and to tailor responses to the situation at hand. A state with high unemployment and low pollution, for example, might very well choose to loosen environmental regulation in favor of business, while the opposite might be true in a tight labor market with high pollution. Thus, for self- government to mean much, the federal government must be reluctant to take on issues that can be addressed at lower levels of government. Anyone who thinks that it is the business of the federal government to determine the levels of cops on the beat or computers in the classroom is not very interested in self- government. Democracy, although it involves substantial protections of minority rights, still means that the majority (or its representatives) gets its way most of the time. It should be with trepidation that the courts overturn legislative decisions and substitute their judgment, and only for compelling reason, or they weaken democracy by trivializing it. That is why I think that overturning Roe v. Wade and giving the matter back to the states is the moderate position on abortion. The penumbras and emanations of Roe were far too fanciful a ground for determining the issue once and for all. These are the grounds upon which I claim that the Clinton Administration, far from being a moderate administration, was extremist, contemptuous of self- government, and not terribly democratic. In other words, it was a liberal administration........

To: Neocon who wrote (85763)	8/19/2000 11:36:03 AM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

... and therefore there is no reason to deprive the majority of an activity that seems fitted to the occasion. And what kind of benediction would have been "fitting"? Maybe Fred Smart's? Yeah, his brand of religion would be loved by everyone. Deprive the majority of an activity? Nobody deprived them. Everyone there could have said a silent prayer if they wanted to. Sound more like you wanted to inflict some religious orthodoxy on the minority (even if I accept that the majority wanted a benediction). Why is it when I have a religious thought my first impulse is not to make people listen to it but to enjoy it myself or only later, maybe, with others only of like mind? This doesn't seem to be a universal act of consideration though. If I hear anymore about how unempowered our Christian sects are in this country I'm gonna wretch. Try being a Hindu, Buddhist or even a pagan in this country. They have a clue.