AudioBanter.com - View Single Post - Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican

wrote:

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 13:01:09 -0700, dapra wrote:

Susan Hogarth wrote:

wrote:

But feel free to fight for your right for the 80 hour work week for 12
year-olds.

You don't think a 12-year old has a right to work as much as he likes?
Why do you have to control other people?

Wow! That's a really sickening statement.
I may assume that according to you an 8 years old has the right to sell his/her
body for a candy bar. He/she is paid by the prevailing market rate, no? We don't
want "to control other people", especially not the 'free market', do we?
It seems the last few hundred years of human history passed you by.

The libertarian rhetoric has an appeal to inflate the self worth and
feed the "you can't tell me what to do" feelings of the immature.

When logic fails, there is always insult to fall back upon.

The
difficulty comes in trying to actually analyze them through
situations.

Indeed. Rather than make the attempt, many people prefer instead to just
accept what they've been told or do what 'feels good'.

I mean the state does evil things: Painting yellow lines
down the highway. Installing stop signs. Establishing nuclear safety
standards. All of these things interfere with individual choice.

This is your argument in favor a state monopoly - that it does do some
useful things? This is like saying that slave-owners were really not so
bad because after all they did feed the slaves. Lost in this bootlicking
is the truth that the slaves actually grew and prepared the food and the
masters simply 'allowed' them to have some of their own things. This is
exactly our relationship to the state, although not so onerous by far in
most cases.

The even more absurd thing is these folks think that when people get
together and do the same thing by agreement as say a homeowners
association, it's all fine.

Yes, because that is a voluntary agreement.

But when they get together and do it as
government its inherently evil.

When did you and I 'get together and do it as a government'? What is
inherently evil about the state is the fact that *some* people 'get
together and do [things] as a government' and other people get the bill.

Though all the same problems occur.
And when they have disagreements over the homeowners contract, they
turn to the state provided court to resolve it.

Why not? We've been forced to pay for it - why not to try extract some
of that value back by using it? Meanwhile everyone suffers because these
'free' courts provided by the state discourage private enterprise in
that direction, just as the 'free' schools discourage investment in
private schools.

Anyway the absurd results like the above come from a total
determination not to let the first chink in the foundation of the
sound bite idea take hold because there is a real fear that once its
taken out the whole edifice crumbles rather quickly.

Now that is interesting, because that is what I think happens with state
apologists. You won't even address the question of when you think (or IF
you think) people should be free to make their own decisions. If you
faced this question honestly you would understand that it is never right
to force another person to live as you wish him to live.

- Susan