X-Message-Number: 23136
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 11:22:48 -0500 (EST)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: relevance
References: <>

I said nothing about private property or the necessity of
government generally. I am concerned, here, with the need of
cryonicists, as a small minority, to be protected from
regulations or laws that might be favored by a majority. In a
pure democracy, or a pure communitarian system, no such
protection would exist.

Fortunately the U.S. Constitution states unequivocally that
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this
Union a Republican Form of Government"  (Article IV, section
4), and "The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are
reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"
(Tenth Amendment).

My point, which I thought was clear, is that anyone who wants
the right to be cryopreserved currently enjoys that right in
the United States largely because of constitutional
protections such as the ones I just quoted, limiting the
power of the Federal Government.

The first words in the Constitution are "We the people," not
"We the ruling class" or "We the elected representatives."
Thus power is granted to government by the people, and any
power not explicitly granted is reserved. It was in keeping
with this general principle that the legality of cryonics was
affirmed in California.

It is self-defeating and ultimately self-destructive for a
minority of people who wish to be unregulated to argue in
favor of regulating other people and their activities. If the
power of government is unconstrained, it will not be applied
only to "other people." It is just as likely to be
applied to you.

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