Re: More Virginia "justice"

In article <foirj2$raa$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Keith F. Lynch <kfl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>I'll take that as a "yes."  Please tell me what evidence would suffice
>to convince you otherwise.  If your answer is that no amount of
>evidence could ever convince you that government is our enemy, then
>yours is not a reasoned position, but a position of unreasoning faith.

I think it's no more possible to speak of "government" as a monolithic
entity than it is "humanity".  "Is humanity good?" is a question without
an answer.  "Government is our enemy" proceeds from the same sort
of misplaced reification.

I certainly am deeply skeptical that the people I see around me could
ever make the kind of society you favor work better than the one we have.
That's not a position that is completely closed, but it would require
fairly extraordinary evidence, where all I've ever seen from you is
bald assertion and speculation that doesn't even rise to the level 
of a Ken MacLeod novel.

>I don't recall whether you're religious.  

Then you haven't been paying attention.

>If you are, isn't there
>something in your religion about worshipping nothing but God?
>Government is not God.

Wow, that's really reaching.  

I will go so far as to say that the tenets of my personal religion
place no restriction on my worshipping anything I happen to feel
like worshipping.  I don't feel that I worship government so much
as simply recognize it as a necessary evil -- with emphasis here
on the word "necessary".

(And I guess I've just answered my upthread question with a "yes",
as otherwise I'd just be ignoring you.)

-- 
   David Goldfarb          |
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  |       Horace Gerstenblut n'existe pas.
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