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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brad Bolen who wrote (21922)	12/18/1998 12:54:00 PM
From: RJC2006	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

<<<At least we (Libertarians?) are consistent with our policy...even at the expense of reality. >>> Thanks for clearing that up.

To: Brad Bolen who wrote (21922)	12/18/1998 5:58:00 PM
From: Dave Reed	Respond to of 67261

Hi Brad, There's too much in your message to respond to everything, but I do want to strongly agree with your statement below: This century is littered with the graves of people slaughtered by other people. I think by this you are saying that it is people, not governments, who are the acting agents. If you are saying by this that the actions of people should be judged independently of whether or not those people call themselves a government, then I strongly agree with you. I'm against the initiation of force or fraud by any individual or group of individuals. This belief is independent of whether or not these individuals call themselves the government or whether or not the intent of their action is to do something that both you and I would agree is good such as feeding the poor. Your example of how companies might sacrifice food quality or safety were it not for the government is a good one. The power of individuals or companies to do harm in that way is limited because the size of companies and the scope of their actions is limited when compared to the government. For all of the horrors caused by private industry, I can easily match you 100 or 1000 to one with horrors caused by government action. I'm not just talking about wars -- how about the mass starvation caused by government (i.e. individuals in power) policy in countries such as the Soviet Union and Cambodia? The answer to the problems inflicted upon the world by individuals in companies is not to give even greater power to other individuals in the government, in my opinion. Or, are only well intentioned and wise people attracted to government service? The history of the 20th century would suggest otherwise to me. Dave

To: Brad Bolen who wrote (21922)	12/18/1998 6:10:00 PM
From: Dave Reed	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Hi Brad, By the way, I know I came off sounding rabidly anti-government in my message. I'm not normally like that, I'm actually fairly tolerant even of the government and rarely rouse myself to do more than vote Libertarian in the elections. I am just pretty upset by the bombings that are going on now. It's always the powerless people -- the poor -- that suffer in wars. As a defender of the poor against crazy libertarians, I'm sure you understand that. Dave