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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (278)	1/11/2001 12:57:09 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

The concept of absolute and inalienable rights makes wonderful rhetoric, but such rights do not in fact exist. The men who wrote the Constitution surely knew this: even as they wrote the noble words about the Creator endowing all men with inalienable rights, they were accepting a system of slavery which alienated the rights of large numbers of people. Every right you have is constrained by its interface with the rights of others. People whose idea of pursuing happiness is having sex with children will have their right to pursue happiness constrained; people whose religion requires human sacrifice cannot invoke freedom of religion to justify their practices. This balancing of rights is a function of Government, and in a democratic system the points of balance reflect the priorities of the governed. These priorities change, and the points of balance change as well. I am sympathetic to large parts of the libertarian agenda, but a fundamentalist libertarian is as dreary and impractical, IMO, as any other fundamentalist.

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (278)	1/11/2001 6:14:19 AM
From: Rarebird	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

<I believe in the rights of the individual and that it is in the best interest of society to avoid a government that is given enough power to suppress those individual rights. And every time that we give the government one of our hard earned dollars to perform some function, we are giving up some of our rights and giving the government power over us.> I'd like to suggest that government plays the same role in an economy as an operating system plays in a computer. It sets up the basic conditions for other agents to do their work, provides the basic services, and prevents resource gridlock and system crashes. A good operating system makes it easy for programmers to write programs: they can use system services rather than doing everything themselves; they spend their time accomplishing something for the user rather than fighting the computer (or other programs). Likewise, a good government makes it easy for businesses and individuals to prosper. It provides services that benefit everybody, resolves disputes, and keeps the system running fairly. You are way off base and have nothing to back up your beliefs here: individuals don't prosper all by themselves. They owe their success to the other people that help them, and to the government that provides them with opportunities, reduces risks, and provides public goods. Evidently ours does a good enough job that Americans like you think that these things come free, like the air.