In article <fokv50$5km$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Keith F. Lynch <kfl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>David Goldfarb <goldfarb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>Keith F. Lynch <kfl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>> I don't recall whether you're religious.
>> Then you haven't been paying attention.
>
>I'll admit it. I'm not much interested in religion, so I don't pay
>much attention to who here is religious and who isn't, unless they
>make a big thing about it, as Harry and Karl do.
I'll give you a clue down in my sig.
>> I don't feel that I wor****p government so much as simply recognize
>> it as a necessary evil -- with emphasis here on the word "necessary".
>
>Maybe "wor****p" isn't quite the right word, but anyone for whom no
>amount of evidence can ever convince them that a government is bad
>is putting it in a very special category, one usually reserved for
>religious faith.
You're palming a card there. I'm quite convinceable that *a*
government is bad -- from Stalinist Russia to your current
Commonwealth of Virginia. That government in general can be
dispensed with is an entirely other question.
To use an analogy I've used before: Pointing out that the air
in Los Angeles is polluted, or talking about the killer smogs
of '50s London, is not going to convince me that we should stop
breathing. (And saying "How many decades of effort and millions
of dollars trying to deal with air pollution will it take before
you realize that we should get rid of the atmosphere?" won't either.)
>For the record, it *is* possible to convince me that a government is
>good: If, for a span of 30 years, a government were to falsely convict
>nobody, draft nobody, involuntarily tax nobody, not engage in any war
>except in self-defense, torture nobody, slander and libel nobody, and
>not coerce anyone in any way, I would be convinced.
Okay, and if you can point out a society run along anarchist lines that
lasted for thirty years and had less violence than ours, as good a
general standard of living as ours, and wasn't conquered by anybody,
I'll at least consider that as evidence that what you advocate
is possible.
>Note that that's more than government is willing to grants *me*. Even
>though my false conviction is more than 30 years ago, I am, in their
>eyes, still permanently and irredeemably evil. If I were to use the
>same standard on them, then the governments of Virginia and of the US
>would forever stand condemned for their past actions, regardless of
>anything they do in the future.
It's been pointed out to you many times that the particular state
government you live under is unusually bad in that regard, and yet
you constantly point to it as typical of all governments.
--
David Goldfarb |"Atheists view their theist friends with
goldfarb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
| much the same feeling as nonsmokers do
goldfarb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
| their smoking friends."
| -- David R. Henry, on rec.arts.comics.xbooks
|
