From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Sep 09 2002 - 16:08:21 MDT
--- Harvey Newstrom <mail@HarveyNewstrom.com> wrote:>
> Such a government would not be by the people for the people. Such a
> government would be a dictatorship where the only voters are those
> who are approved by the government. This would not be a democracy,
> in my opinion. Are people here really turning against democracy?
Democracy has significant flaws which we've all discussed from time to
time, including a tendency toward demogogery, majority tyranny, and a
willingness to trade liberty for security, which all seem to many to be
caused by a lack of appreciation for individual liberties and the
integrity of the Constitution that protects them, a phenomenon that
results in ANY society when an excessive percent of the population is
sufficiently detached from any personal experience in taking
responsibility for defending that Constitution.
Heinlein's proposition that only those who have given federal service
could vote is certainly little different from proposals by Bellamy,
Niven, or Pournelle. It is certainly of a nationalist flavor. If one
doesn't believe in the idea of nations, it is certainly an alien one.
However, Harvey is wrong to directly equate them, since Bellamy stated
that all should be forced to give service, while Heinlein merely made
service a free choice of an individual, that they would have their
other civil rights no matter what choice they made. Heinlein's only
real proposal was that only those who had given service could be
trusted to wield their vote to the betterment of all rather than for
selfish purposes only (like women only voting for pro-choice candidates
or other women, or blacks voting for liberal blacks, or state citizens
voting for those who deliver the most pork to their districts, etc).
Harvey, though, seems to assume we are tossing our libertarian
credientials out the door. We aren't. We are taking a multipath sort of
reasoning here. IF we are to live in a nation or a non-libertarian
world, we would prefer that it be thus, as the next best thing, if we
cannot achieve our libertopia.
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