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

To: gao seng who wrote (30573)	10/1/2001 9:39:00 PM
From: St_Bill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Forgive me but old habits and knee-jerk reactions die hard: what you said would make a great paper topic -- so much to distinguish and explain we could consume this thread and everyone would hate us. One thing: the question that you or I or both of us seemed to broach was, "Whence rights?" A related Comment: Governments -- societies' creations which can in turn bite the hands that feed them -- often take rights away by force -- and if those governments are clever enough, do it slowly enough, making sure that every little abbrogation seems justifed at the time, it's amazing how thinking can be changed with no APPARENT force and how enslaved a people can willingly become. Look at what Hitler, Stalin and even a U.S. Senator named McCarthy was able to accomplish with nearly univeral support that bordered (?) on religious fervor. Rights are infinitely alienable. Fundamentally we give these to each other. But realizing that we are each sometimes not to be trusted even to obey something so simple as a stop sign, we create a government to protect and defend those rights. But, like any trustee, they have to be audited, repeatedly and thoroughly. This is what's often said about the relationship between vigilance and freedom.