----- Original Message -----
From: "John D. Giorgis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 8:33 PM
Subject: Re: Poll (US posters only)
> At 02:18 PM 7/25/01 +0200 J. van Baardwijk wrote:
> >>And the beauty of it all Kristin - is that *you* get to spend how *your*
> >>money is spent, instead of letting President Bush, Trent Lott, Tom
> >>Daschele, Dennis Hastert, and the rest of us here in Washington decide
how
> >>your money should be spent.
> >>
> >>That Kristin, is called freedom, and its Republican, and I do hope you
> >>enjoy it.
> >
> >What makes spending your own money something Republican? This implies
that
> >the Democrats think people shouldn't be allowed to spend their own money.
>
> Its a bit more nuanced than that. (And for Kristin's benefit, I did not
> equate being a Republican with freedom.)
>
> Spending your own money, by definition is freedom. Whenever someone
> forcibly takes your money from you and spends it, that is, by definition,
a
> restriction on freedom.
Well, going 100 mile per hour in your own car is, by definition, freedom.
Someone forceably stopping you is, by definition a restriction on freedom.
The government is not, in our country, a group of folks that just follow to
follow a private agenda. Rather, they are charged by the population to
carry out community responsibilities. Yes, we can all complain about how
well they do it, but the idea is that they lay out their agendas and the
people who get the most votes win. These folks get together and determine
the course government will follow.
If the Republican party is the party of greater individual freedom, it is
also the party of smaller community responsibility. Republicans leave
people on their own more, for better or worse. They see less that requires
joint efforts, and they are more likely to see ecconomic disparity as
natural instead of something to be overcome.
Ironically, they are also the party that wants to decrease the freedom of
people to do things that the Republicans consider immoral. They tend to
favor laws governing bedroom behavior more. The standards of immorality,
generally, are those of the neo-evangelicals, who make up about a third of
the Republican party.
Dan M.
