--- Jeroen van Baardwijk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > At Stardate 20030630.0816, Jan Coffey wrote: > > >JvB you don't seem to get the difference between what Dr. Brin speaks on > >below, and "parinoia". You also don't seem to get how one can "distrust" > >athority, but have trust in individuals who happen to be in athority. You > >also don't seem to get the difference between trusting systems, and not > >trusting individuals in those systems. Could you please elaborate on these > > >so that I may understand your perception? > > Your posts indicate a very strong distrust of authority and a very strong > fear that this authority will abuse its powers. However, authorities (FREX, > > a government) don't abuse their powers, it's the *people* (or rather, some > individuals) within that authority who might abuse their power. Therefore, > your distrust of authority is really a distrust of individuals -- the very > same individuals you voted into that position. > > We don't *blindly* trust our elected officials either, but compared to us, > Americans take their distrust into extremes; hence the observation of > paranoia. It appears that America's basic assumption is the exact opposite > of Europe's basic assumption: while you seem to go by the assumption that > elected officials can *not* be trusted to not abuse their powers, we go by > the assumption that they *can* be trusted to not abuse their powers.
Oh, I see. And I think you are right about the assumption. We think that power corupts and we built a system to deal with that coruption. We are always keeping an eye on them and wondering if they are misusing their power. You don't think power corupts, and so you are not concerned as much about the system. You place the problem with the individual (as we do) but you don't think that changing the system would have much effect? It's hard for me to get my head around that. Our basic beliefe, our "truism" is that power corupts. So of course we watch our leaders like a hawk and we keep our system constantly moving (although infinatly sowly & often with movement in both directions) twards a system that alows that coruption less and less. Our "founding fathers" left europe at a time when it was mostly monarchies, and they set up this kind of government becouse of the very corupt power they experienced at the time. My Native American ancestors were even abused by that same governement. We are allways digging and digging and finding every possible way that anyone might be abusing their power, becouse we don't want these things to ever happen again. OUr feeling on Europe is that we dig more, so we find more. We don't think we are paranoid, just doing our duty to make governement work properly. > So far, most of our elected officials haven't betrayed that trust. Our > politicians know that any abuse of power is likely to be discovered sooner > or later, and that this discovery will put a quick end to their political > career. Few are willing to risk their position of influence, their > reputation and their quite pleasant paychecks. If you were a little more catious and dug deeper, and trusted a bit less, we think you would find that you are missing a lot of abuse. > > Jeroen van Baardwijk > > _________________________________________________________________________ > Wonderful-World-of-Brin-L Website: http://www.Brin-L.com > > > [Sponsored by:] > _____________________________________________________________________________ > The newest lyrics on the Net! > > http://lyrics.astraweb.com > > Click NOW! > ===== _________________________________________________ Jan William Coffey _________________________________________________ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com [Sponsored by:] _____________________________________________________________________________ The newest lyrics on the Net! http://lyrics.astraweb.com Click NOW!
