poli-sci@ucbvax.ARPA (10/31/84)
From: JoSH <JoSH@RUTGERS.ARPA> Poli-Sci Digest Wed 31 Oct 84 Volume 4 Number 97 All kings is mostly rapscallions. --Huckleberry Finn Contents: Running for Office Electronic Democracy Politics ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Oct 84 17:45:06 est From: vax135!ariel!norm@Berkeley JoSH, to run for office is not necessarily to lie, cheat, steal. Nor is it incompatible with anarchy, as I see it. I've heard that the original Greek meaning or root meaning for anarchy was "no rule", not "no government". That is, a government that did not rule (initiate force) could still be a geographic monopoly that legitimately controlled the use of force. Its primary function would be to retaliate against those who initiated force or substitutes for force to obtain values from others. So long as that government didn't "rule" it would be anarchic, in the original sense of the word. If someone runs for office, and gets in on the promise that he won't lie, cheat or steal, and if that someone refuses the tax booty offered as salary and refrains from initiating force or fraud in office, then what's the beef? How is it evil? It may not necessarily be productive in a positive sense, but it seems to me that just to hold an office hostage for a term at least prevents a statist from exercising it. Norm Andrews, vax135!ariel!norm [This seems to be the Libertarian Party's argument also. I don't buy it. "Let me, a principled man with a love of freedom, own these slaves, so they won't be owned by these other evil persons." If you have a geographic monopoly that controls the use of force, the logic of power and human nature says that it will grow into a tyranny. --JoSH] ------------------------------ Date: Tue 30 Oct 84 16:24:52-PST From: Terry C. Savage <TCS@USC-ECL.ARPA> Subject: Running for office "To run for office is to lie, cheat, and steal in quite a literal sense." Josh What nonsense! One of the reasons government has been able to expand its influence is that Libertarian-minded people frequently fail to understand transition problems, and to look at our multi- colored world in terms of black and white, all or nothing. Premises: 1) It is possible to run for office without lying 2) It is possible to run for office without cheating (I assume this means some kind of general honorability other than lying) 3) It is possible to reduce the amount the government currently steals Conclusion: If someone runs for office successfully without lying, cheating, or stealing, and someone (through persuasion or whatever) effects a *reduction* in the amount the government steals (or at least does not increse it) they have neither lied, cheated, nor stolen in the process of running for office. Waiting for the best is the worst enemy of getting *anything* better! The system is best reduced from within, not from sitting on the sidelines and academically theorizing that the *net* result of participating in the system *must* be to strengthen it. That thesis is unproven, and I believe counterproductive to the cause of reducing the intrusion of government into our lives. As for actually running for office--I'd do it in a minute, if I thought I had a chance of winning, and I may do it anyway just to raise some issues. What would be the chances of success for a candidate who told the electorate their concepts of right and wrong were all screwed up? TCS [We have a fundamental disagreement in that you seem to think that the only way to improve a political system is through political action. If the people come to realize that all the political doings are bad for them on the whole, the politicians will break their necks trying to get out in front and "lead" the way to dismantle the government. Someone who runs for office, no matter what he says with his mouth, is supporting political "solutions" with his actions. --JoSH] ------------------------------ Date: 30 Oct 84 13:52:12 PST (Tuesday) Subject: Steping towards an Electronic Democracy From: Jerry <Isdale.es@XEROX.ARPA> It is far to early to suggest a full fledged electronic democracy for a society as large and diverse as the USA. Experience is needed with smaller societies. One problem is access to the electronic systems. In order to implement a electronic democracy everyone must have easy access to the voting system (ie terminals in phones). Some of the local or national computer societies (ACM, etc.) might be an interesting test group since many of the members are already on Internet. Has any group made such an attempt? On the government side, I would like to see a representative set up an electronic BBoard to which his constituents could write. It doesnt take much to set up a BBoard and many of the rep. communities are rich enough and sophisticated enough to support one. The rep. would need someone to scan the BB for him (as the assistants scan the mail). Several BB's might be needed to allow constituents to debate different issues and also to register "votes" for or against pending legislation. The rep. could publish a news letter BB to inform consitituents of such legislation and committee actions on the BB machine. Anyone know a high-tech representative? A real advance in ED would be public, electronic access to the congressional records (a HUGE Database) and other public documents presented to the congress. This may allow easier scrutiny of representatives by their constituents (and lobby groups). Computer systems of this type would have a much better impact on society than the proposed Star Wars systems. (especially if when the respective systems get used.) ~ Jerry ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Oct 84 10:04:56 pst From: upstill%ucbdegas@Berkeley (Steve Upstill) Subject: Propaganda Any comment on the following? It is the text of a letter I wrote to my elderly Republican aunt. This is my first letter to you in a while, and I apologize for that. Even worse, I'm writing with an imper- tinent purpose: to get you to vote against Ronald Reagan. Normally, I would never consider doing this, but the prospect of four more years of his government makes me genuinely scared. Few others seem excited about the prospect; why am I so fearful? It is the responsibility he holds in the military power of the United States. The United States and the Soviet Union have spent the last 25 years accumu- lating nuclear arsenals, to the point where a fraction of either can essentially end life in the Northern Hemisphere. The president of the United States holds this responsi- bility virtually alone. In the next war, there will be no time for discussion, debate, negotiation, elections. He will decide for millions of lives in a matter of minutes. It's no exaggeration that in terms of destructive power, Ronald Reagan is one of the most powerful men in human his- tory. I wouldn't give this man life and death responsibility over my family, much less entire nations. I believe Ronald Reagan is incompetent for this responsibility based on his view of the world. In Ronald Reagan's world, there are two kinds of people, two kinds of country: good and evil, Us and Them. Every person and every country is either one or the other. Either you are a friend of the USA, promoting our interests, or you are an enemy now and forever. In the world of Ronald Reagan there is no evil in a place like El Salvador, where death squads kill thousands of people a year, because they are our ally. Likewise, there is no good in the Nicaraguan government, which, whatever its faults, did replace one of the bloodiest, most corrupt in the Americas. They are The Enemy. Leaders have always promoted this view of the world because it is simple, hence communicable to the body politic. It is also useful in many situations to behave publicly as if you believe it; John Kennedy's handling of the Cuban missile crisis owed its success to his convincing the Soviets that he meant business. But very few peo- ple in power really believe in international politics as Armageddon (Nixon's rhetoric was never friendly, yet he opened the door to China and negotiated SALT I with the Rus- sians). They disbelieve it because it is an utterly hope- less, cynical doctrine, condemning the world to conflict and destruction. Its natural conclusion is that the only way to deal with your opponent is to destroy him. Every President of the Nuclear Age has denounced the Soviets, yet each has managed to find accord with them in one form or another. This President has not, because in the world according to Ronald Reagan, there is no way for us to influence a situation for the better; the only variable is how steadfastly you resist the Devil. Watch the man, listen to what he says and the policies he proposes. He really believes that the United States is God's country, that the more like us a nation is, the better it is, and the less like us, the worse. Our enemies are God's enemies, and there is no point in try- ing to get along with them, or to cooperate with them in any way. In a crisis, there will be no course but fight it out. However, unlike previous such leaders, Ronald Reagan will be fighting with nuclear weapons. I cannot believe that he appreciates the responsi- bility he bears. I believe that based on its power to harm, the increasing danger of nuclear war is the most important issue on the human agenda, and that the only rational response of a man in the President's position is a grim determination to reverse the tide and find a way back to a safer world. President Reagan sincerely believes that he wants peace, but his actions belie that belief. No Amer- ican president has been so openly hostile to the Soviet Union, or so insistent on one-sided proposals. He offers a proposal for reducing or eliminating land-based missile systems, then expresses surprise that, unlike the United States, the Russians are almost entirely dependent on them. Ronald Reagan has publicly opposed every arms control agreement made by his predecessors; what better can we expect of him now, or in the next four years? You or I hear the phrase "nuclear war" and the first thing we do is wince in anticipation, and the second thing we do is try not to think about anything so horri- ble. As citizens, there is so little we can do that avoidance is a rational response. But that just makes it more incumbent on our leaders to worry about it for us. Instead, we have a leader who actively encourages us to sleep, by giving us the impression that we're all in good hands. I was having coffee with a friend one day, discuss- ing a trip he made to Europe, and he was describing to me the most impressive thing he saw there. He had gone to Dachau, and he had actually touched a gas oven.. Reading about millions dying, he said, means nothing. Touching an oven is something you can understand. I could see in his eyes the reality of it. I could see him being frightened and revolted all over again, that something like that could ever happen. If it ever happens again, he said, it'll be over my dead body. In the following silence, I tried to imagine how it could happen in the first place. I thought of my viewpoint on it, and how abstract it seems, looking at it from another country decades later. Certainly many leaders of Germany were malevolent, but the rest of the country had gone along: officers had taken orders, citizens had not tried to find out what happened to their Jewish neighbors. I wondered how different the outcome would have been if that whole country had had Mark's contact with the oven, if every housewife and bookkeeper had had to herd five people into a gas chamber. It finally seemed to me that the evil of the process of abstraction was at least equal to the evil of the Reich; while they had started the whole thing, it was the distance of space that kept it going, that allowed Germany and other countries to keep their backs to what was actually happening. It enabled administrators to shut their eyes to what their orders meant in terms of human devastation. It allowed regular people to do nothing, to say "Maybe they're in prison, maybe they're dead. So what?" Or not to think anything at all. I would even say that coolness of the facts, the distance between orders and actions, allowed the leaders themselves to rationalize their actions in terms of some greater good. That same abstraction process is going on now. In the corridors of power, the reality of national death is masked behind jargonistic dialogues about megatonnage, throw weight, kill probabilities. Under Ronald Reagan, we have for the first time heard people in responsible positions speak seriously of winning nuclear war, about "acceptable" losses of twenty million people. These people are completely removed from the destructive power they hold. Ronald Reagan, who believes everything they tell him, is one step further removed. It's so hard to conceive of any war in personal terms without having been there. It's particularly hard to think about nuclear war because it will be incomparably worse than any other. How many millions dead? How much climatic change? How many years of radiation in the air and water and food? It's so hard to grasp and so easy to deny. Ronald Reagan is fundamentally unwilling to try. Do you think he really appreciates the responsi- bility he bears? Do you think he sits up nights worrying about the possibility of war, wracking his brains to find a way out of the trap of an endlessly escalating arms race? Do you think he feels the least bit skeptical about the idea of Peace Through Mutual Terror? Does he show any regret, at all, that, as he says, the only way to bring peace is to accumulate more destructive power? Is it too much to expect a little appreciation for the horrible irony of such a situation? Is it too much to expect hear a sentence like "Well, this may be the only way for now, but BY GOD we're going to find another."? I have never heard any such sentiment from Ronald Reagan, and I don't expect to. He is satisfied that safety can be assured only by a continuing arms escalation which is the exclusive responsibility of the Russians. He "jokes" about nuclear war. He fights tooth and nail to build a missile for lev- elling cities and calls it the Peacekeeper. The power of the Presidency is unique. It seems to me that a creative, determined President could make the world safer by some other means than mutual terror. Failing that, he could try. At the very least, he could show some re gret, or fear, or minimally, respect for the hideous situation we are in. For Ronald Reagan, this is the talk of fools and weaklings. Where is American ingenuity and deter- mination when it comes to the greatest problem facing the human race? Utterly impotent, it seems. If the best that America can do is reproduce brute force, then we truly deserve him as president. The world is getting more dangerous all the time. This is not just a dreamy generality, but can be measured in missile flight times, in the megatonnage of nuclear arse- nals, in the increased control given to computers, in the number of places in the world where conflict can flare. The danger is easy to deny. But far from leading us to an understanding of it and thence to action to lessen it, Ronald Reagan allows it to worsen by his unconcern, and draws us to complacency with his per- sonality. Believe me, I'm no big fan of Walter Mondale. I expect his domestic policies to make me cringe. But the worst he could possibly do is as nothing compared to the prospect of nuclear death. Ronald Reagan is sleepwalk- ing, and expects us to join him, to the darkest dawn in 4 billion years. As the graffiti says, "Vote for Walter Mondale; you'll live to regret it." [Well, since you asked: That's an awful lot of verbiage to say "I'm scared Reagan will get us into a nuclear war." And most of the verbiage is striking purely emotional chords that have little logical connection to the main statement. This is a typical liberal position and I'm sure you believe it fervently, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. (a) Reagan's bark is a lot worse than his bite. His actual actions (as contrasted with his rhetoric) have been remarkably mild (removing Carter's grain embargo, for example). (b) Somehow or another, in this century it has always been the Democratic presidents that got us into major wars. The last Republican to do that was Abraham Lincoln. I think the reason is that the Republicans have been the party of realpolitik and the Democrats have been the party of emotional idealism--which (in the US) is what gets us into wars. The answer to your letter is simple: Mondale is more likely to get us into a major war, nuclear or otherwise, than Reagan (but I'm not voting for either one). --JoSH] ------------------------------ End of POLI-SCI Digest - 30 - -------