Hi Kevin,
On Dec 2, 2011, at 9:20 AM, Kevin Kervick wrote:
Yea, I can buy that but you jumped to the idea that community institutions
are necessarily government. When I read the piece my communitarian sensibility
was thinking the family, little league, churches, the Boys and Girls Clubs, Cub
Scouts, and also government schools. You seem to see a larger role for
government in the developmental landscape than I do.
As an example of what I believe is wrong. Look at any place where there is
anomie. It is because the government supports and services have grown at the
expense of natural supports.
Um, no. You also see it places like Somalia and post-Saddam Iraq, where
government has broken down completely (unless you define anomie very strictly,
just to avoid that comparison).
This is what i refer to as the Libertarian Blind Spot -- they obsess over
areas where there's too much government, but refuse to even admit there exist
places with too little government.
Um, no - and why must you use a patronizing tone in your responses? I've
said several times that I am not a libertarian so why are you continuing to
place me in a box that I am not owning for myself?
I believe you are a progressive masquerading as some kind of centrist.
Jumping to a government solution from the Brooks story is an example of your
bias toward a government approach to building community. You seem to have a
blind spot.
I don't think the government is modeling or nurturing much of anything
these days.
I completely agree that our current federal government is by-and-large
broken, as our most of our states. I also believe that our current
corporate/financial structure is largely broken.
Um, no. It is not that government is broken. That is the progressive party
line. In the United States there have been too many failed centrally planned
efforts to make a better country and those efforts need to be unwound.
Government is trying to do too much and it needs to be shrunk. Your
progressive blindspot has you believing we are looking at a problem of
inefficiency when we are looking at a problem of ideology, intent, and
structure.
This doesn't mean that *all* government is bad, any more than it means that
*all* corporations are evil.
Of course not. Who ever said that? Straw man argument.
Sure, I agree that any attempt to fix government is short-term in some sense
of the word; but as they say, in the long term we are all dead. There are no
perfect solutions that will work forever. But there are better solutions that
will work for quite a while. And they do NOT just happen "spontaneously"; we
have to invent them. That's what God put us on earth to do.
God did not put us on Earth to BE God, although you seem to be well on your
way.
I swear, sometimes Libertarians sound like a retread of Rousseau's noble
savage: if we only didn't have all the trappings of civilization, how wise and
noble people we would all be!
Another straw man argument. Have you ever taken a logic course?
Kevin
-- Ernie P.
Kevin
Hi Kevin,
Community institutions should nurture responsibility and fairness.
This ethos is not an immutable genetic property, which can blithely be
taken for granted. It’s a precious social construct, which can be undermined
and degraded.
Exactly! Responsibility is not innate, it is something we learn socially
by example. We need Lean Government that models and nurtures responsibility.
Not a Big government that tries to be responsible for everything, nor a Small
government that is responsible for nothing. The former encourages
irresponsibility, the latter fails to discourage it
E
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Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
