From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Aug 29 2002 - 17:29:40 MDT
Brian writes
> >From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin@tsoft.com>
>
>> I do appreciate the motives of people like you
>> and Brian to do what you can for the country you
>> believe in, but most people on this list (alas)
>> don't have countries that they believe in.
>
> That is the crux of the problem.
What problem, would you say?
Here is the problem as I see it. Nations exist by
historical necessity (if others don't believe it, then
they should take a quick look at a globe). There are
memes, traditions, and attitudes that help nations
survive. If I belong to a nation, and don't help it
survive then I'm a defector (both in the conventional
and in the game-theoretic meaning of the term).
So if you want your nation to endure (and perhaps you
should have reasons for that) then it follows that one
ought to adopt the traditions and memes that enable
it to do so. (Before some people knee-jerk react to
that, notice the second word of this paragraph.)
Quite apart from any team loyalty or patriotism, which
doesn't necessarily need to be rational (it's an emotion,
like love) I believe that the evidence strongly suggests
that western nations are better nations, that they're
happier and healthier nations. This follows from both
the health and mortality figures on the one hand, and
from something even more telling on the other: watch
people's feet. You see them moving towards western
nations whenever they can: who flees Europe for Africa?
who flees the US for Central America?
> It is of course both painful and infuriating to those
> of us who have paid a heavy price for our citizenship
> to see this country run down by people who have paid
> nothing for theirs.
I don't entirely buy the idea that you've made any
great sacrifice. You did what you did because it seemed
like the right thing to do and also a reasonably good
deal. I have a question for you about this, so hold on.
> Heinlein's reasoning of course is that people don't respect things
> they haven't had to pay dearly for. In "Starship Troopers" you
> couldn't vote unless you had done a period of Federal Service.
However disadvantageous to me personally, I would vote in
favor of such a restriction. But as you know, that vote
and many similar ones would go down to defeat 5:1 or worse.
My question: if you had it to do all over again, and with
the Singularity approaching within 40 years, and given that
Clinton's approval rating reached 75% during the height of
the Lewinsky affair, and that the U.S., if anything, will
remain as liberal as it is now until the end, and that
"the problem" is that very few understand patriotism and
even fewer are susceptible to it...
would you do it again?
Lee
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