(urth) Gene Wolfe's Politics
Adam Thornton
adam at io.com
Tue Mar 31 17:57:25 PDT 2009
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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