--- Jeroen van Baardwijk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> At Stardate 20030626.2315, Jan Coffey wrote:
>
> > > Further, a judge is accountable to the Justice Dept.; when reports come
> > > in about a judge seemingly abusing his powers, the Justice Dept. will
> > > investigate and if necessary take action.
> >
> >You certainly do trust your governemnt a lot.
>
> Of course we do -- the people in the government are there because we (the
> people) voted them into government. We wouldn't vote someone into office if
>
> we didn't trust that person. That doesn't mean that after the election we
> return to our daily lives and not check on our elected leaders, though. If
> they screw up, they have betrayed our trust and I can assure you that then
> there'll be hell to pay.
>
> Regardless of their political views, our elected leaders to be reasonable
> and intelligent people. They know very well that if they screw up, they'll
> pay the price for that at the next election.
>
> Does the American public actually have any idea about how we perceive your
> extreme distrust of government and anything that reeks of government
> involvement?
No please explain. Besides as someoen who has a website and list dedicated to
DB, and knowing DBs opinons on Otherness and a "healthy distrust of
governement" I would liek to hear your opinons.
We distrust governement becouse nearly all of us were, or have ancestors who
were burned by one governement or another (even the USA). So I would not say
that our distrust is unwarented.
Why should we care what your perception of our governemtnal distrust is?
> You can argue about whether or not it is justified, but over
> here the general perception is that your fear of government borders on
> paranoia. And the "the rest of the world is out to get us" argument we hear
> so often doesn't exactly help to contradict our perceptions.
Do you fear OUR government?
We fear all governments, yours, ours, all government. We value freedom more
than you do obviously. However, I do not beleive that you speak for all
netherlanders. Especialy the ones who have imigrated here.
> > > >The addition of a required explination on the other hand sounds like a
> > > >good idea. "Explain the proof" that is an improvement that I will be
> > > >mailing to my senator and congraswoman as soon as I can get it
> reviewed
> > > >for spelling etc..
> > >
> > > More accurately: "explain how you reached your decision".
> >
> >It sounds good that a jury should have to explain their decision. What
> else?
>
> Well, a cold beer sure would be nice. Hey, it's 30 degrees out here! :-)
>
> Oh wait, that's not what you meant, right? Well, lessee, what else? How
> about a jury (if you insist on having one) whose members are not your peers
>
> but are selected from all walks of life? That way the jury decision will be
>
> more representative of how the entire population would vote. When your case
>
> is decided by your peers, there's a bigger chance of the jury voting "not
> guilty" to protect one their own.
>
> Example. Location: Some southern state, in a town where racism is still
> rampant. A white working-class guy murders a black guy. The jury is made up
>
> of his peers: they're all white, all working-class, they all live in the
> same town. Personally I would be surprised if that jury would find the
> killer guilty.
> Then there's also the issue of deciding when someone qualifies as your
> peer. I mean, for someone to resemble my peer as closely as possible, he
> would have to be a white male, 36 years old, married, a two-year old son,
> and a job as sys-admin for a government agency. Where do you draw the line?
Like I said before, the defence (as well as the prosecution) spends a lot of
time picking a jurry. You get to pick (in agreement with the prosicution) who
judges you.
Your racist cenario was one that probably did happen at some point, but you
have to remember we concourd those people and forced them to agree to our
ways. It took them a while to get the hang of it. (pun intended).
We made a dicision that greater freedom was better than greater justice,
specificaly becouse of the increased possibility of injustice.
=====
_________________________________________________
Jan William Coffey
_________________________________________________
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