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Originally Posted by rat
This along with your little statement regarding safety makes me absolutely sick to the stomach to think about.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin
That quote just seems to jump to mind. Safety as a whole, is a completely arbitrary and frankly idiotic concept. It is neither tangible nor measurable, let alone real. It is an illusory concept that allows the human mind to work within a specific set of parameters so that it can adequately address the world around itself. A sense of safety is no more than the comfort one receives from his environment and the factors within it. As the people of New Orleans found out, at any time, given any set of circumstances, your whole world can come crashing down around you.
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It's funny, that paragraph would be just as truthful if I replaced "safety" with "freedom". The safety that the gov't can provide is the safety from the actions of other people, which scare me far more than a hurricane. I'm sure that during the anarchy following the hurricane and flooding, those people would have gladly given up some of the "freedom" of the looters and criminals for a little more safety to allow rescue efforts to happen.
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As to your second comment, regarding the government and the blind trust you place in it, I'm rather disheartened, as this seems to be a growing trend for the younger generation. You want to go down the slippery slope argument of safety, I'll take you down one that takes your argument a bit further.
1) Rights reduction occurs by the government in the guise of "safety."
2) Citizens eventually forfeit every right that could potentially cause harm or infringe the "safety" of others.
3) The government makes all decisions for people, without checks and balances to their power.
4) Rights of citizens completely disappear.
5) Without the obligations to the citizens (as the citizens have forfeitted their rights, and thus there are no government obligations to the citizenry), the government has carte blanche as not even the citizens have the right to stop it.
6) With obligations voided, the government acts in its own self-interest, as any reasonably aware entity will fundamentally do, regardless of the effects on its people.
7) The government's self-interest lies in fundamental conflict with that of the citizenry, by definition.
8) The government fulfills only the needs necessary for itself, and the citizenry falls into disrepair, poverty and despair.
The only difference between my slippery slope and yours is that mine is proven both by history and logic whereas yours lies firmly on a foundation of sand, piss and vinegar, holding no merit even to the most cursory of logical examinations.
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For one, I never said I have blind trust in the government, I did say I trust the government more than the average person. That is only logical: the government is an actor whose actions can be somewhat predicted. The government is also more likely to follow standard rules because it relies upon those rules for its existance. People in general are random, illogical, and often operate off personal whims that might not be known until they have screwed you over in some way. And also, if we are speaking here of logic, you make a great deal of faulty assumptions that have no basis in reality. Your whole slippery slope argument, while cute, has little factual basis. There has been numerous points in history where autocratic government systems have led toward an increase in the well-being of the people under their rule. Before saying that an argument I never made holds no merit, perhaps you should examine your own somewhat. It has holes big enough to drive convoys of semitrucks through. There might be a way to challenge what I said on a logical basis, but you have failed to do so.