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Politics : Bush-The Mastermind behind 9/11? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rock_nj who wrote (5354)	2/17/2004 4:44:07 PM
From: LPS5	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20039

OK, I think you're spliting [sic] hairs over the semantics of "social institution" vs. "public institution". Social institutions include marriage, faith, commerce, education, and the like: voluntarily entered, freely associating groups or organizations. Public institutions are those organizations and entities which are at least subsidized, and in some cases owned and run, by the government: municipal departments, public schools, police and fire departments, and the like. The former are liberty enhancing; the latter, inherently coercive. Do you really think that the difference between the two, delineated, constitutes (a) "splitting [of] hairs"? Typical libertarian type of debating, all the "i"s dotted and "t"s crossed, rather like a typical liberal arguing position. I won't apologize for having my facts straight and attempting to bring some semblance of exactness to the loose...indeed 'liberal'...confines of your assertions. As for the "libertarian type of debating," as opposed to "the typical liberal arguing position," what exactly, in the latter case, are you referring to? Blathering emotion and innuendo? Philosophical disconnects? A demand for uncritical analysis? If so, I believe you're correct; and I'll happily subscribe to (and administer arguments via) the former discipline. In either case, I was referring to the reliance of an individual like myself on public (vs. private like say a private business or a private road)... Also interesting: name a "private institution." (And, lest we get too far afield: the term "reliance" is pivotal to this discussion: we'll return to it shortly.) ...[public] institutions in my everyday life, whether they are defined as "social institutions" or "public institutions". There's no "whether" to it: if you're talking about public institutions, you're not talking about social ones. I should have just said public institution in my original post, so as not to get under the skin of some of our libertarian friends. No, you should have used the proper term simply to be correct. Other than that, why worry about whose skin you get under? You're certainly not under mine; in fact, in that this conversation involves - or will involve, when we get to it - the virtues of public education as told by a public school devotee, your disjointed arguments and freeform use of terminology will be nothing if not didactic. :-) I guess a social institution could be either public or private (for example a family is a social institution that couldn't be defined as being part of the public sector). Really? In that case, what would you label a 'public social institution' versus a 'private social institution'? LPS5