----- Original Message -----
From: "Randy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Computer Guys Announcements and Discussion List"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2007 9:59 PM
Subject: Re: [CGUYS] [ OT WARNING!!!!
We have increasingly come to see government as the main instrument by
which our society and nation implements its collective will and carries
out what we assume as our societal obligations. Public schools, Social
Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the VA are just some examples. If "we"
accept an obligation to provide every person who needs it with health
care, I don't think there is any track record of universal health care (at
least in the developed world) occurring other than through government.
Our NPS has not and probably could not deliver this.
In many areas, the need to turn to government to meet an increasing number
of societal needs is due to the lack of real community, on top of the
breakdown of extended and even nuclear families. Even real neighborhoods
are hard to come by. Being perhaps the most individualistic society on
earth, government ends up doing much of what real communities do elsewhere
or could do.
Government also has become increasingly necessary to address the
consequences of people exercising their presumed absolute right to
reproduce, since so many people are incapable of doing so themselves. In
modernity and especially in the U.S. the notions of rights and
responsibilities have become separated from each other. One consequence
of this is the negation of the possibility of community. Another is the
increasing reliance on government to assume responsibilities, including
responsibilities that arise when people exercise their presumed rights,
including the unlimited right to reproduce (not to mention produce,
consume, etc.).
Since, as a society and as individuals, we rarely if ever think about or
through, or rethink many of these things, we are basically stuck with the
answers we have. The form and structure of our federal government was
designed for a world infinitely different than the world we have today, in
2007, yet we rarely if ever question whether it should be changed, let
alone replaced with something else. When one doesn't question, especially
ask fundamental questions, one accepts and is stuck with the answers they
have, which constrain the range of possible action.
As an example, we hear this or that presidential candidate claim to be the
candidate of change. But no one running for President is or can be for
really fundamental change. Someone for real, fundamental change wouldn't
run for President, the would instead seek to get their fellow citizens to
rethink the institution of the Presidency. But this sort of questioning
is far beyond anything that occurs in public discourse.
Randall
----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Ballinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2007 2:37 PM
Subject: Re: [CGUYS] [ OT WARNING!!!!
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