From: k_aegis@mindspring.com
Date: Wed Sep 01 1999 - 08:38:04 MDT
Patrick Wilken writes:
>This is a very good point and one that I think has been missed in >some of these discussions. There is a tremendous tension between >individual freedom and the common good. This has always been true, >and the Western political tradition has in large part been a search >for a principled line between the two.
In the current American socio-political landscape, most of our current public debates have a basis in exactly this tension: abortion, gun control, smoking, even cloning and genetics.
Turning to the applications of that tension within extropianism, itself, I arrive at the following 'hard questions': To what extent do extropians support the development of a wider community, and to what extent would they prefer to develop private enclaves? Will extropians arrive at a point wherein they reject the sovreignty of any nationally-based governance, or would the extropians in the end have to establish a compromise between their own ideals and the strictures of geopraphically-based polity? If extropians decide to establish their own polity, what form would it take?
Kathryn Aegis
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