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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (88236)	11/26/2004 11:47:16 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793975

Freedom and democracy have no meaning independent of law and government, or so it seems to me. You are free to go to the supermarket. The government does not forbid you to do this. You are not free to take cocaine, the government tries to stop you from doing this. There is a good chance it would fail if you tried but it would at least make the attempt. Both cases are about your actions whether they are legal or illegal. Now imagine you want to claim a tax deduction on your credit card debt. Such a deduction was allowable in the past and is not allowable now. But the elimination of this deduction is not a restriction imposed on your freedom. Being taxed at all could be considered an infringement on your freedom but if so it is a necessary one, and in any case I'm not talking about taxes in general but rather specific changes in the tax code. If you try to deduct this interest from your income for tax purposes the IRS will not allow it. If you get audited and you get billed for additional tax (and maybe interest and penalties) you are not having your freedom infringed on by the fact that this deduction wasn't allowed. Do you see the distinction between whether the government allows you to shop at the local supermarket (or use cocaine), and whether it recognizes a specific tax deduction as valid? An even better example than the tax code (because taxes do take your money, and to an extent are a means of social control) would be eligibility for benefits. The government rules on welfare benefits don't allow you to make $500k a year and still claim welfare benefits legally. Would that be an infringement on your individual liberty? Of course not. If "gay marriage in Massachusetts is creative destruction", then so is the decision not to endorse it. Huh? Creative destruction is about change. How can maintaining the status quo be creative destruction? Its a destruction of the imposition of such a plan by Massachusetts courts. It is a destruction of the social construct of "gay marriage". More generally, whether or not you consider that to be destruction, it has the same type of force behind it. The desire for people and groups of people to create, modify and maintain social constructs for their society. If a court imposes a solution that isn't "creative destruction", that is command and control. "Creative Destruction" isn't a linear thing only going in one direction, nor is it mostly about destruction. You have to allow for destruction when new ideas or methods or arraignments push out the old but continual destruction isn't the point. Tim