RE: Noam Chomsky (was RE: join The American Peace Movement)

From: Dickey, Michael F (michael_f_dickey@groton.pfizer.com)
Date: Tue Jan 07 2003 - 07:03:27 MST


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Davis [mailto:jrd1415@yahoo.com]

I think capitalism is a good thing. Gently regulated
to prevent it from biting the many small, trusting
hands that feed it. I think freedom is a good thing,
too. I like the idea and the practice of political
freedom and the consent of the governed. The idea of
voting as a means of confirming that consent seems to
me feasible and equitable. I think it entirely
reasonable to allow the commies to stand for election
amidst the throng of competing political creatures.
And if they should win the vote, I think the governed
are entitled to enjoy/suffer the consequences of their
choice freely made.

Less than that isn't freedom. At best it's
paternalism, at worst conventional subjugation.

   ----------------

First of all, Jeff, I am surprised at your notions of freedom. Especially
being an extropian. Voting is NOT freedom, especially when the majority can
take away the rights of a minority by 'freely voting' Would you consider it
'freedom' for an ethnic minority in the US to have their rights 'voted' away
by the majority?

>From - http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/meaningoftherighttovote.shtml

"Contrary to popular rhetoric, America was founded, not as a "democracy,"
but as a constitutional republic-a political structure under which the
government is bound by a written constitution to the task of protecting
individual rights. "Democracy" does not mean a system that holds public
elections for government officials; it means a system in which a majority
vote rules everything and everyone, and in which the individual thus has no
rights. In a democracy, observed James Madison in The Federalist Papers,
"there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or
an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been
spectacles of turbulence and contention [and] have ever been found
incompatible with personal security or the rights of property."

Secondly, I have still not heard what you moral condition for a government
is. Anything less than a democratic constitutional republic has no moral
claim to existence, 'vote' or not. As clearly indicated from the previous
discussions, the people of the south did not consider themselves a part of
the north, and as such their political future could not be 'voted' on by the
north.

Any people wishing a free democratic rule have a moral right to pursue
independence against oppressor 'parent' states, and any attempt to prevent
such an action is immoral.

That being said, Id like to try to understand how you consider the North
Vietnamese government under Ho a morally sound one.

Michael

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