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
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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]
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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]
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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
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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]
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End of POLI-SCI Digest
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