At 7:25 PM -0800 2/18/00, Colin A. Reed wrote:
>So Phil and Liz can say the say the same thing (all people are pretty
>much the same) and come to opposite conclusions (trust the feds because
>you trust your neighbors vs. don't trust your neighbors because you
>wouldn't trust the feds). Actually I shouldn't have said neighbors,
>because there's a good chance that you actually know them well enough to
>know how far you can trust them.
Well, that's it in a nutshell. Phil thinks people are basically good,
so as long as government is 'democratic' (and thus reflects the will
of the 'good' majority) it can have untrammeled power. I believe
people are basically scum, and thus can't be trusted with power.
I think, overall, the history of the West bears me out. Most of the
major changes in social structure that 'good' people approve came
about due to decree, not democracy -- it was courts, not Congress,
that ordered desgregation in the South and overturned the CDA. I used
to think that, given the choice, people would rather free themselves
than enslave their neighbor;I now believe that, in fact, most people
are happy in iron chains so long as their neighbor is in leaden ones.
