Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again)

brunians at brunians.org · 19 May 2009, 22:03 · from 2009-May.txt.gz

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From: brunians at brunians.org (brunians at brunians.org)
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 18:03:48 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: (urth) Gene Wolfe Fans Talk Politics (Again)
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You're familiar with Thomas Jefferson, right Lane? They taught you about
him in law school or college or something, I am sure, and you are just
pretending to be ignorant for rhetorical effect.

Go on with you: I am feeling favorably disposed towards you now and have
no real desire to explain Jeffersonianism to you, almost certainly falling
into one or more of your lawyerly traps along the way. I argue for fun,
not blood and would prefer not to engage with a professional unless you
tie one lobe of your brain behind your back or something.



...[W]hat country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure.

-- Thomas Jefferson



.









> So your democratically-elected government gets to serve at the
> pleasure of a small but violent minority? I understand frustration
> with graft and waste, but calling for rebellion against a lawfully-
> seated state for carrying out the will of society?
>
> At some point, you realize the value in cooperation, community and
> shared society. All civilization is based on this premise, that
> together a people can accomplish what one alone cannot.
>
> The substitution of civil government/society with a profit driven
> market removes this universally-agreed as beneficial goal of
> cooperation and replaced it with a unilateral goal of profit. As
> wealth cannot be created ex nihilo, profit must arise from a producer
> taking more than a product is worth. This is only possible on a market
> where supply and demand are manipulated against the interest of the
> consumer.
>
> Thus, the market is merely the latest iteration of the master-slave
> relation. It is the battlefield of class conflict. How does calling
> taxes imposed by a lawful sovereign equal theft, but the creation of
> profit not equal extortion by a self-selected, undemocratic oligarchy?
>
> Individuals and individual liberty are only meaningful insofar as a
> civil legal system ensures they are protected. Authoritarian abuses by
> right and left ignore this. Free markets actively surpress it by
> economic manipulation.
>
> Tell me again why I should kill lawfully-seated ministers of the civil
> government to preserve the rights of the people exploiting me?
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On May 19, 2009, at 4:36 PM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:
>
>> I said this in a recent post. I will expand upon it.
>>
>> Taxation, the extortion of money from the citizens, is permissible for
>> things that are necessary. My list of necessary things includes the
>> military and things related to the military, infrastructure and
>> certain
>> kinds of research. I insist that the involuntary nature of taxation be
>> explicit and resist the inevitable attempts at expansion of the
>> things-to-be-paid-for-by-taxation.
>>
>> Of course, as a good Jeffersonian, I believe that from time to time
>> it is
>> necessary to shoot the bastards and start over. We're not quite
>> there yet.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> .
>>
>>> On May 19, 2009, at 4:19 PM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> But we (the people on the other side of the argument) are none of us
>>>> arguing for a complete lack of functional civil society and a
>>>> Hobbesian
>>>> all-against-all. Were you under the impression that we were?
>>>
>>> I don't see how you can get from the position that all taxation is
>>> theft to the position that some governments are legitimate without
>>> giving up on the first one.
>>>
>>> Adam
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>>
>>
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