> _Quadrant_ has just accepted my latest rejoinder to Margaret
> Somerville in
> record time. It'll be published in the August issue. Aussies on
> the list can
> get it in their local newsagency or read it in the local public library.
Well, congratulations.
> However, this good news came to me the same day that the American lower
> house of Congress passed this ridiculous and draconian legislation.
>
> It seems the world's greatest liberal deomcracy is intent on
> turning into a
> theocracy. There goes the global neighbourhood.
Been coming for a while. When I first came over to the US from the UK, first
thing I noticed (aside from 8 people being shot dead in unrelated incidents
the weekend of my arrival in Houston) was how rabid people are about
religion and denomination. Utterly rabid. I don't notice it so much after
five years, but still, compared to the UK, it's a real eye-opener.
(Then I started to notice what an English accent does to Texans, after which
I stopped paying attention to other things. I swear, it's like clubbing baby
seals, only you can't stop).
The theocratization of the US can be seen as an illustration of why
non-repressive societies become repressive societies: give people freedom,
and that includes the group which wants to use that freedom to set up a
repressive society. How do you defend against that without becoming a
repressive society? You don't. It's the paradox of libertarianism and
anarchism -- neither can really exist in practice. To defend a libertarian
or anarchist society from determined people and organizations who want to
bring about another form of society/govenment requires that the libertarian
or anarchist society organise and become non-libertarian/non-anarchist.
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
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