Gene Wolfe's Politics

Adam Thornton · 01 Apr 2009, 00:57 · from 2009-March.txt.gz

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From: adam at io.com (Adam Thornton)
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:57:25 -0500
Subject: (urth) Gene Wolfe's Politics
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Message-ID: <C4D4B8F4-94F8-48CF-A102-F007C16C245C at io.com>

On Mar 31, 2009, at 6:14 PM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:

> I don't think that I would deny that police services are a proper  
> function
> of government: sometimes when people talk about protecting the weak  
> from
> the strong, they are really talking about taking money away from  
> people
> who have it and spending it on people who do not have it: I will  
> come flat
> out and ask you if that is what you mean, or part of it.

If you are going to insist on a radically-stupidified-and-insulting  
caricature, yes, that is what I mean.

Your inability to, for instance, pay for police protection or legal  
counsel should not mean that you can be abused with impunity.   
Universal access to police services or a code of law that applies to  
both rich and poor both "take money away from people who have it and  
spend it on people who do not have it."

I would go farther: it is immoral and to everyone's ultimate detriment  
to allow anyone, however worthless, however much of a net cost rather  
than a net benefit to society, to starve or die of an easily-and- 
cheaply treatable disease.  I understand that you fundamentally  
disagree and that we will not be able to find common ground.

I believe that, unless you can find some way to turn this back to Gene  
Wolfe, that I will stop trying to discuss this with you.  I am not a  
Libertarian, and I believe, in general, that Libertarians do not  
realize that a civil society has a positive value, or perhaps they  
radically overestimate their chances of medium-to-long-term survival  
in a world in which each person gets precisely the law he pays for.

Adam

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