[79296] in Cypherpunks
Re: Rejecting Dialog with Government Vermin
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kent Crispin)
Wed Apr 30 03:09:17 1997
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 23:07:16 -0700
From: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
On Tue, Apr 29, 1997 at 07:20:32PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
> At 5:39 PM -0800 4/29/97, Kent Crispin wrote:
> >On Tue, Apr 29, 1997 at 06:03:43PM -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> >[...]
> >>
> >> Think of it this way: there are tactical and strategic decisions.
> >> Strategically, I would like the Federal government to evolve into a form
> >> that's consistent with the principles of individual freedom, peace, and
> >> limited government enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
> >
> >Just curious Declan: If these things are enshrined in the
> >Constitution, and they are intrinsically desirable, and our
> >forefathers did their level best to institutionalize them and
> >presumably strongly believed in them, how is it, do you suppose, that
> >we evolved to our present sorry state? And, supposing something
> >closer to the libertarian ideal comes to pass, what is to prevent us
> >from evolving to another sorry state?
> >
> >To put a finer point on it, what flaw existed (exists) in the founding
> >fathers dream and actualization that prevented it from being a stable
> >condition?
>
> Exactly. I agree completely with Kent.
>
> Assuming his point is rhetorical, as it must surely be.
>
> Any reliance on the legislature to fix fundamental flaws is doomed...this
> is not just my opinion, but is the essence of the Constitution. Truly
> serious flaws, should they exist, are designed to be fixed via
> Constitutional Amendments (scary as those are to any rational person), not
> by tens of thousands of ad hoc law passed by pork-barrelling politicians.
I actually meant it as a serious question, in addition to any
rhetorical value.
Rhetoric: many people point back to the good old days of the
founding fathers and lament how we have fallen from that ideal.
Clearly there is a problem with that lament -- it it was ideal, we
wouldn't have fallen.
Several possible answers:
1) There actually is a serious flaw in the political organization
created by the founding fathers.
2) There is a fundamental flaw in the human species that will corrupt
any form of government.
3) There is no serious flaw -- the current government isn't as
bad as we claim. Or, put another way, the evils we see are a function
of size of government, and size of government is more a function of
population than anything else -- the larger the population, the
larger the government.
I think that strong arguments could be made for any of these, though #3
would be shouted down in this forum.
> And yet this is what we've come down to. Ten thousand pigs snorting and
> wallowing at the public trough.
I could argue that out of a population of 300 million or so, that
isn't bad at all. A true elitist, OTOH, would say that there are
about 75 million pigs, fed by 224 million sheep, and that there are
about 1 million real human beings in the country.
--
Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
