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From: ins_akaa@jhunix.UUCP (Ken Arromdee)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: In the Name of God
Message-ID: <2188@jhunix.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Mar-86 17:07:50 EST
Article-I.D.: jhunix.2188
Posted: Wed Mar 12 17:07:50 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Mar-86 23:39:44 EST
References: <1680@ihlpg.UUCP> <707@mtuxn.UUCP> <356@gargoyle.UUCP>
Reply-To: ins_akaa@jhunix.ARPA (Ken Arromdee)
Organization: TARDIS Repairs, Inc.
Lines: 29

>>Where were these people when the Tibetan, Cambodians,
>>Ukranians, etc., etc., etc., were being slaughtered?  
>Since the American religious groups protesting US policy in Central
>America are acting on the assumption that the US is a democratic
>society in which it is possible to influence government policy by
>popular pressure and appeals to morality, it follows that Mr.
>Ferraiolo believes that the governments of the Soviet Union and China
>and the Khmer Rouge are likewise democratic and responsive to
>popular pressure and moral appeals even from religious groups in the
>US, to say nothing of their own citizens.  

No, I think what he's saying is something like a) if you selectively
protest against bad government policy in democracies only, the effect is
to de-emphasize the atrocities that non-democracies are responsible for,
b) that the oppressed in non-democratic countries deserve sympathy 
even though such sympathy is less likely to help, and/or c) that there
is value in making such oppressions more widely known.  According to
your reasoning, anyone in the US who complained about concentration camps
during WWII believed that Nazi Germany was democratic and responsive to popular
pressure and moral appeals.
-- 
"We are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to
socialism, because socialism is defunct.  It dies all by iself.  The bad thing
is that socialism, being a victim of its... Did I say socialism?" -Fidel Castro

Kenneth Arromdee
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