X-Message-Number: 391
From att!uunet.UU.NET!ininx!ininx.com!jkreznar Tue Aug 13 01:44:56 PDT 1991
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 91 01:44:56 PDT
From:  ([John E. Kreznar])
Message-Id: <>
To: 
Subject: The Tragedy of Political Government

In cryonics #390 Allen Lopp urgently implores us to write or call a legislator

to thank her for her interest in cryonics and press our views on the matter.  Of
all the effects such an action might have, the one that is most certain is that
it will strengthen the role of other people in making decisions that are
properly his alone.

The truth is that what you do with your own body, or contract to have done with

it, is your business alone and concerns no one else, assuming of course that you
haven't, in so doing, contrived to violate others' identical prerogatives.
Neither that legislator nor the constituents she presumes to represent have any
legitimate say in the matter.

Your intentions are good, but by your actions and recommendations you empower

the very institution with the potential to obstruct your plans.  Your purpose is

not, I assume, to win popular acceptance of cryonics, but to save your own life.

Suppose the legislature, in its infinite wisdom, outlawed cryonics.  Would you
abide by that outcome?  Of course not.  Defeating one's mortality is far too

important a matter to be decided by others.  So, if you don't intend to abide by
the outcome of the political process, it is the height of deceit to participate
in it in the first place.

Your actions ACCELERATE THE SUPPLANTING OF PERSONAL CHOICE BY COLLECTIVE
DICTATE, which is the most serious disease of society resulting from the
ascendancy of democratic political government a couple hundred years ago.

The TRAGEDY OF POLITICAL GOVERNMENT manifests itself in this case by converting

a noble and proper intention to defeat one's mortality into an empowering of the
foremost non-technical potential obstacle to that accomplishment.

Your energies would be far more profitably expended in INSULATING yourself from
the depredations of collective dictate, than in STRENGTHENING it in the vain
attempt to capture it on your behalf.

        Relations among people to be by mutual consent, or not at all.
 |  Voting in government elections, or petitioning government, or willfully  |
 |  accepting government ``benefits'' when it's feasibly avoidable (thereby  |
 |  generating demand for taxation), accelerate the supplanting of personal  |
 |  choice by collective dictate,  making these most serious crimes against  |
 |  humanity.  ---John E. Kreznar, , uunet!ininx!jkreznar  |
   It got so cold last winter, I saw a voter with his hand in his own pocket!

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