Serious questions
I don't mean to embarrass anyone, but I do mean to challenge everyone.
In the comments to a recent post, and y'all are supposed to be reading the comments anyway, it was said:
I have a couple of serious questions for anyone who agrees with this statement.
Do you understand what universal literacy has done for this country? Or what decent health care means to a person's quality of life?
Do you think universal literacy is a good thing? If no, I need to know why it is good for some fraction of the populace to be illiterate and innumerate--and I don't care how big that fraction is.
And do you think quality health care should be available to everyone? If no, I need to know why it is good for some fraction of the populace to be unhealthy--and I don't care how big that fraction is.
And if you say yes to either, I want it explained to me how…under existing circumstances, not some ideal stae of existance…these things can be attained without government involvement.
You see, I have a STRONG libertarian streak, it rund deep and broad. But Reason is my toolset and Reality is the substance I work in. I see the abuses, I see the corruption—but it's not the society that must be disrupted. The society as laid out is capable of delivering great good.
It is the corrupters that must go.
Understand that.
A capitalist republic is a structure that can properly represent the will of the majority and still respect the minority. If it isn't corrupted.
A socialist society is a structure that can properly represent the will of the majority and still respect the minority. If it isn't corrupted.
There are any number of structures that can properly represent the will of the majority and still respect the minority. If they aren't corrupted.
You don't unwind thousands of years of human cultural development, dammit. And you can't convince me that's what you want to do. No, you want to unwind enough to loosen the strictatures you personally feel. And you haven't thought through the repercussions if everyone in the nation dissolves the particular part of the universal compromise called society that they feel restricts them. Because if you did, you'd recoil in horror.
