As if going to the dentist's office wasn't bad enough, I had to see the cover of this week's edition of Time while I was there. Apparently we are to have another draft soon, and Time gets the job of explaining why it Good For Us:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1657256_1657317,00.html (check under 'more stories' for the nauseatingly soviet-style cover illustration as well as at least one piece opposed to conscription). The piece starts: "... The founders were not at all optimistic about the future of the Republic. There had been only a handful of other republics in all of human history, and most were small and far away. The founders' pessimism, though, came not from history but from their knowledge of human nature. A republic, to survive, needed not only the consent of the governed but also their active participation. It was not a machine that would go of itself; free societies do not stay free without the involvement of their citizens. "Today the two central acts of democratic citizenship are voting and paying taxes. That's basically it. The last time we demanded anything else from people was when the draft ended in 1973. And yes, there are libertarians who believe that government asks too much of us — and that the principal right in a democracy is the right to be left alone — but most everyone else bemoans the fact that only about half of us vote and don't do much more than send in our returns on April 15. The truth is, even the archetype of the model citizen is mostly a myth. Except for times of war and the colonial days, we haven't been all that energetic about keeping the Republic. " -- Susan Hogarth http://www.colliething.com ForumWebSiteAt http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
