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. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23136