At 23:24 5-8-01 -0400, John Giorgis wrote:
>At 03:44 PM 8/2/01 +0200 Baardwijk, J. van DTO/SLBD/BGM/SVM/SGM wrote:
> >This is ridiculous. According to you, I should be *grateful* for losing my
> >job last year, because if my parents hadn't gone to the same party 40-odd
> >years ago, they would never have met and I would never have been born in the
> >place. When Dan Minette lost his job last year, he should have been grateful
> >for it, because if the ship carrying the Founding Fathers had sunk in the
> >middle of the ocean, the United States and the company he worked for would
> >probably never have existed in the first place, so he would never have had
> >that job anyway.
>
>No, this is completely different. In this case, Hans was a direct
>beneficiary of a certain set of *policies*. As a beneficiary, we should
>look very skeptically on his attacking of these same policies later.
>Neither of the above examples involves a policy, or a post-facto
>disagreement with the policy.
It's basically the same. In all three cases, the person involved is
supposed to be grateful because of an event that took place before the
person was born. It makes no difference whether that event was "my parents
meeting each other", "the Founding Fathers being lost at sea", or "a
government decision of 200 years ago".
Jeroen
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