Re: How Views Cause the Situation to Change (was Re: Cheney's...)

On Monday 12 May 2003 1:07 am, Neil Stevens wrote:
> On Sunday May 11, 2003 05:05, Daniel Cassidy wrote:
> > On Sunday 11 May 2003 7:27 pm, Timothy R. Butler wrote:
> > >   With vigilance against liberalization and socialization of the
> > > government, especially through the constant fight against big
> > > government, the U.S. will remain the place where those seeking a
> > > better life will continue to come.
> >
> > Umm, did you really mean 'liberalization' here?
> >
> > I mean, socialization I can understand and even agree with your point;
> > Government provides more services, government has more direct control,
> > government is more powerful.
> >
> > Liberalization, however often has the opposite effect because there's
> > less to police. If you legalize marijuana, for example, firstly you
> > don't need extra police officers to arrest users and dealers. Secondly,
> > because it can be produced and sold openly, the price goes down and it's
> > no longer a viable source of income for terrorist and criminal
> > organisations and the like, and so you have less such groups to deal
> > with.
>
> So if we legalized murder, there would be no more murder, right?  Because
> hit-men would no longer be able to charge so much?  And our streets would
> be safer since we wouldn't spend so many resources tracking down,
> arresting, and trying murderers?

I think you've taken my post out of context here, which is understandable 
because I quoted a whole sentence without clarifying which bit I was talking 
about.

To do so now, Tim effectively made two statements; the first being that a 
fight against liberalization and socialization is also (or contributed to by) 
a fight against 'big government', and the second being that these 'fights' 
lead to a better quality of life for citizens. I'm concerning myself with the 
former statement, I have no problems with the latter and even agree with it 
to an extent, with the level of agreement depending on exactly what Tim said.

In any case, firstly, I was not arguing for or against the legalisation of 
marijuana, and I clearly stated that to avoid this kind of response. I'd 
rather not got into the argument about that right now.

Secondly, I think you might have missed the word 'often', which indicates that 
what I'm saying isn't always the case, but that I believe that it is more 
frequently the case than not.

Thirdly, we're talking not about an increase or reduction in the occurrence of 
whatever is legal or illegal, but about an increase or reduction in the size 
of the government. I've no doubt that, were murder legalised, its occurrence 
would immediately increase dramatically. However, the size of government 
would also be decreased since it would no longer have to deal with those 
murders.

The point being not that any of this is good or bad, but that the government 
would therefore have less influence, not more. In general, it seems to me, a 
smaller government is also a more liberal one, and a fight against 
liberalization is likely to promote a larger government. This seems to 
contradict Tim's phrase 'With vigilance against liberalization and 
socialization of the government, especially through the constant fight 
against big government...'

Now that I come to clarify my own statements, however, I feel I may also have 
clarified Tim's statement to myself. If we take into account the ambiguity of 
the English language he could have meant. to paraphrase:

'With vigilance against socialization (especially through the constant fight 
against big government) and liberalization of the government...'

In other words, the part about 'big government' was only supposed to apply to 
'vigilance against socialization' and not 'vigilance against liberalization', 
in which case I have no problem with it (hence my statement, 'Umm, did you 
really mean 'liberalization' here?').

If this is what Tim meant however, then my level of agreement with what I 
described earlier as his second statement is significantly reduced; I'm 
hoping to clarify the intended meaning of the first half of his sentence in 
order to ascertain how much I agree with the overall point, and if I can be 
bothered to argue about it :).

-- 
dan

"Were i susceptible to having my mind changed, it would have changed my mind" 
- Matthew Parris

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