X-Message-Number: 23119 From: Subject: Re: post # 23106 (Mike Perry) Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 22:25:19 +0000 You say "Not universal, but it's thousands versus millions". World wide it's thousands (at best a few million) versus billions! Jefferson's thoughts on 21st century technology and the discretionary income of people was not my subject. He wrote the constitution and as I said in an earlier post, spoke to the general welfare clause (don't take it too literally). What would he think of social security, Medicare, medicade, the education dept., H.U.D., D.E.A., A.T.F., F.B.I., and all the other "programs" to redistribute wealth and "protect" us that have evolved over the past two centuries (and mostly within the last century)? I don't think he would be pleased...just my opinion. "Socialism is more workable than a libertarian system which is nonexistent". My definition of a "working" system is how much freedom and prosperity it produces. Even though the current U.S. system is the most prosperous, don't think for a moment that there is much you can do without some government bureaucrat "overseeing" the activity in some form. We are not as free as we were in 1950 when I was a child. We probably will not be as free in 2050 as we are now...and there isn't much freedom left! So what that a lot of people enjoy the Federal Government being in their lives, there were a large number of happy Nazis and communist in the old U.S.S.R. There are probably a lot of happy people in Cuba and North Korea. That said, we are better off without Nazism, would be better off without communism and with the current U.S. government returned to the way Jefferson wanted it...small and no where near as involved in our lives! You say it means something to you that the Feds. can't (yet) monitor your e- mail. If you truly wish it to remain that way, supporting the parties that have tried to monitor it in the past seems irrational to me. The Libertarians, without question, are opposed to such monitoring and will state that. Bin Laden's acts are the justification for the Republicans and Democrats enacting the Patriot Act. We the people by not marching in the streets and flooding congress with nasty letters and e-mails on the subject are the reason it still remains on the books. You say the constitution is interpreted differently by most people than strict libertarians. I have not interviewed "most people" but of the people I personally know and correspond with, the overwhelming majority have never read the constitution or even heard of the Federalist Papers. They have no idea whatsoever of what the founders wanted in a government. They (the overwhelming majority) think we live in a Democracy and that "the majority rules"...some have even used those very words in conversation with me. One personal friend, when I pointed out that G.W. Bush's "Faith Based Initiative" (Federal money to religious charities) was unconstitutional, responded with: "Oh, who cares!".B.T.W., she is a reborn christian. Well, I care and she and you should care. We and our children (great Ra help them) must live under thr R & D's interpretation of that document...they should read, re- read, re-re read not only it but everything else written on the subject to get a better understanding of what Jefferson, etal meant! That the issues are clearer on the 1st and 2nd amendments than the rest of the document (the Constitution) is an argument in support of my last statement in the previous paragraph. Unfortunately I agree with you on the fate of the Free State Project. I fear that only advancing technology that eventually frees humanity from dependence on a single world is our only real hope! Best wishes, Jerry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23119