From: Paul Bradley <paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 04:19:40 +0800
To: Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>
Subject: Re: democracy?! (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199711012333.RAA01954@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.971102182344.414C-100000@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




> Governments and religions *ARE* people. There are times where I think you
> have said the stupidist thing possible and then you keep typing. Individuals
> are the ones who killed the Jews, put pepper spray in the eyes of
> demonstrators, and just about everything else that gets done.

Yes, but these people were "just obeying orders", these orders in turn 
came from a government which, although it consists of individuals is much 
more than that, The whole problem with demcracy is that it merges the 
views of those that give it a mandate to govern into one huge fudge, 
anarchies give less structural potential for the "mob rule" seen in 
modern democracies. Also, by and large, governments in modern democracies 
are free to commit small evils without ever influencing their share of 
the vote, the bigger evils are the ones that get noticed by the electorate.

Governments are just "collections of individuals", in the same way that a 
you are just "a load of assorted chemicals". To say something like that 
indicates a lack of understanding of the distinction between individual 
views and mob rule, I credit you with more intelligence than to ignore 
such a distinction Jim.

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