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

To: Neocon who wrote (60676)	10/2/2002 6:31:08 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Well, first of all, men generally don't enter into a society voluntarily. They are born into it not by choice but by accident of birth. Some women are born into royal English families, some are born into Russian peasant families, some are born into Shira-law Muslim societies, some are born feudal serfs, some are born slaves in 18th century Georgia, some are born into American frontier families, some are born into African tribes that practice female genital mutilation. None of them chose their societies, and if they were given a free and fully informed choice I suspect they would all choose the first and none would chose any of the othes. In most of the above cases, they have no effective choice to leave the society they're born into. A serf, a slave, a muslim girl, have little if any choice of their society, and little chance to change it to benefit them. There is no voluntary contract there. And I doubt that very many, if any, societies were actually created on a contractual baisis. The strong conquered the weak. If Og was bigger and stronger than Ig, and wanted Ig's daughter, either Ig lost his daughter, or by necessity he agreed to Sog's proposal that Sog will protect Ig from Og if Ig will serve Sog. Hardly a free contract. So you can't say that men voluntarily enter into society to pay it allegience. They are born into it, and are trained to allegiance, and in virtually all cases that's it. End of discussion. Whether the society gets better or worse very few of them can have any impact on. The Contractarian view is nice in theory, but it isn't the way the world works. (The same is true of socialism, btw. Also of basic Christianity, the real thing, not today's church thing.)