From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 94 22:57:14 PDT
To: sw@tiac.net (Steve Witham)
Subject: Re: Bad govt represents bad people?
In-Reply-To: <199408300430.AAA19452@zork.tiac.net>
Message-ID: <199408300529.WAA06832@netcom5.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Steve Witham writes:

> Right, the problem is more than just people in government.
> I was just contradicting the idea that (as Tim May says) people get the
> government they deserve.  Certainly not all people, maybe not most "deserve"
> this deal.

To clarify my meaning, "people deserve the government they get" is
short for saying that the evil, repressive, godforsaken government
than everyone complains about is mostly their own doing. Majority
rule, the will of the herd, etc.

I certainly wasn't saying that *all* people asked for it. 

This seems quite obvious to me, that the problems of America and other
such countries is not that some evil government was, say, imposed by
conquest from the outside, but that the voters got what "they" asked
for.

("They" being most of them, more or less, but not "all" of them.)

I find it useful to remind people of this point, that they get the
government they deserve, as a reminder that asking for the government
to "do something!" or saying "there ought to be a law!" is exactly how
we got into our current mess.

--Tim May



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