X-Message-Number: 401 From att!fernwood.mpk.ca.us!alc!alc.com!lovejoy Mon Aug 19 14:24:15 PDT 1991 Date: Mon, 19 Aug 91 14:24:15 PDT From: To: Subject: Re: cryonics #396 - Re: Write California Senator Watson! In response to the comments of John E. Kreznar (): In cryonics #392 Tim Freeman says > The central error in his argument is to equate communicating with a politician > with "empowering the institution with the potential to obstruct your plans". Where then do you suppose they get their power? Political power is the ability to control who does what, who owns what, who consumes what, who lives and who dies. Historically, such power has been acquired and exercised by convincing hierarchically-organized groups of people to follow some leader (the top of the power hierarchy). The normal strategy is that each layer of the power hierarchy exchanges certain favors with the next lower layer in return for obedience. At the lowest layers, the masses offer obedience in exchange for "peace, security" and enough wherewithal to survive. Barring huge differences in technology, an organized group is no match for any single individual. Depriving the leaders of an organized group of their power can be done simply by convincing a sufficiently-critical subset of the group to accept some other leader (or set of leaders). So easy :-)! The only complication is that people don't choose leaders based solely on personal attributes such as intelligence, but rather on how well the leader projects an image that suggests that the leader shares the meme complex of the people (in other words, to what extent he thinks like the average guy). With modern armies, it may be sufficient to win the military vote (in which case the army is the most critical subset of the population). But that depends on whether the army has been infected with the "army should stay out of politics" meme. Once immortalist memes have spread to a majority of the population, the legal and politial problems will take care of themselves. More to the point, where do you suppose they might get power over cryonics, where they currently have made no pronouncements at all? Could it be that Lopp's action grants them jurisdiction where they currently have none? If your theory that the legislature would have no power over cryonics but for our approaching them with requests for legislative protection were true, then the criminalization of cryonics in British Columbia would never have occurred. The authors of the U.S. Constitution intended that the government should only have the authority explicitly granted to it by the Constitution. Unfortunately, current de facto practice is that the government has any and all powers not expressly forbidded to it by the Constitution, plus some of the forbidded ones, as well. Perhaps we could protect ourselves most effectively by an all-out effort to spread the meme that the legislature cannot exercise power not expressly granted to it by the Constitution. No law is Constitutional unless the Constitution says the legislature is empowered to make law for the law's stated purpose, unless the Constitution says that the legislature can make law with such effects, unless the Constitution says that the legislature can make law respecting the people, places, things, behaviors and/or activities affected by the law. Constitutional laws must be justified by statements in the Constitution that say that the legislature can make laws with such a purpose, limiting/requiring such activity or behavior, controlling such objects/people/places in such a way, and affecting people with such practical consequences. The burden of proof that a law is Constitutional should be on the government. > 4. Do what we would do in an ideal society where the legislature > didn't have any interest in cryonics. The reason they _take_ an interest is that they're _forced_ to by actions such as Lopp's. Demanding the collective's blessing for actions concerning only yourself hastens the departure from an ideal society where people mind their own business. Cryonicists tend to be an intelligent lot perceptive enough to avoid getting mired in these political battles by not forcing personal decisions into the collective arena in the first place. This is why I hope it's worthwhile to air this issue on this forum. Cryonicists are generally not the sort who immitate ostriches when they are threatened by unpleasant events. Problems will NOT go away just because you deliberately ignore them. 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! (Alan Lovejoy) Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=401