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From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sci
Subject: Re: Population Control, Nazi Style
Message-ID: <26500064@inmet>
Date: Thu, 4-Sep-86 00:03:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.26500064
Posted: Thu Sep  4 00:03:00 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 7-Sep-86 02:25:14 EDT
References: <26500056@inmet>
Lines: 60
Nf-ID: #R:inmet:26500056:inmet:26500064:000:2771
Nf-From: inmet.UUCP!janw    Sep  4 00:03:00 1986


>>[smdev@csustan.UUCP ]
>>In article <555@gargoyle.UUCP> carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) writes:
>>>[Jan Wasilewsky]
>>>>(4) If (1), (2) and (3) were wrong, it would be better to have
>>>>famine, disease and war reduce population, than to submit to
>>>>government tyranny. Losing freedom is losing everything, and a
>>>>government that does not stop at one's skin, will stop nowhere. 
>>>
>>>I doubt that Sakharov, Jefferson, Spinoza, Epictetus, or Socrates
>>>would agree that losing political freedom is losing everything, the
>>>*summum malum*.  Nor do I think that most people living today in
>>>countries you consider unfree would agree.  Would you assert that a
>>>nuclear war that wiped out the human race is preferable to tyranny?
>>>In my opinion that would be a monstrous assertion.

>>>[ my answer was: of course not]

>I find Wasilewsky's assertion so very ridiculous that I must insert my own
>two cents here.  To take a case that has been debated in American politics
>for the past few decades, would you rather be dead, or "Red"?  For myself, I

What has that to do with anything?

>would rather live under (and fight) a Soviet tyranny than be a cloud of vapor
>or some other sort of wartime casualty.

You cannot mean it. If you would not fight  -  with  far  greater
odds  - *before* you come under the Soviet tyranny, you will cer-
tainly not fight *after*. In  the  first  situation,  becoming  a
casualty  is  a  risk, and willingness to take that risk makes it
small (by deterring the enemy); in the second, becomimg a casual-
ty  is  a  certainty, while your will to fight has been sapped by
all kinds of brainwashing, conditioning,  and  gradual  accomoda-
tion.

In any case, this has nothing to do with the issue. My point
was that by accepting tyranny of an absolute state you forfeit
your ability to reject *other* evils it inflicts on you -
including famine, war and pestilence - so that the choice
is spurious: you get what you bargained for plus
what you tried to avoid. 

If you sell yourself into slavery, who'll collect?

>I don't like  either  idea,  but  I  would  rather  that  we  all
>tightened  our  belts,  even at the cost of some civil liberties,
>than that we should loose the Four Horsemen yet again. Liberty is
>very  important, indeed worth fighting for, but life is more pre-
>cious yet.  If the human race is to survive, we must not  destroy
>our home; if there are people who cannot see this, we may have to
>use coercion.

Who offered to destroy your home?  Who the hell  are  you  raving
against? I saw attacks against strawmen on the net, but seldom so
excited attacks against such fuzzy strawmen. I cannot  even  dis-
cern  through  your  fumes  the  position  of  your imaginary op-
ponent...

		Jan Wasilewsky