From: yarvin@highlite.gotham.com (Curtis Yarvin)
Subject: Re: Drug testing and welfare
Organization: Gotham Communications Research
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 18:13:12 GMT

In article <92210.190047JMS111@psuvm.psu.edu> JMS111@psuvm.psu.edu (Jenni Sheehey) writes:
>yarvin@highlite.uucp (Curtis Yarvin) says:
>>In article <92206.093638JMS111@psuvm.psu.edu> Jenni Sheehey
>><JMS111@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>>>
>>>Peeve: People who think that people have a *right* to indulge in illegal
>>>activities.  You have a right to try to change the law.  You don't have a
>>>right to disobey it.  If you can get away with it, fine, but don't get
>>>all huffy if you get caught.
>>
>>The wisdom of the sages.  Duh.
>>
>>"Why is doing drugs wrong?"
>>        "Because it's illegal."
>>
>>"Why are drugs illegal?"
>>        "Because, uh, they're _wrong_."
>
>     "Why are drugs illegal?"
>        "Because people who are now probably dead, but were
>         elected by citizens of this country, made a law against
>         it.  I don't think it's wise to use them, but if you
>         think they're ok, you're welcome to try to change the
>         law."

Jenni, did you retake high school civics four times or something?
You're so charged up with Respect for Democracy, your ponytail is
six inches above your scalp.  You could win a spot in Congress
through sheer animal magnetism.  

But there's something lacking in your cute blonde brain, and it's
not intelligence.  Yes, folks, looks like it's time for another
lesson in Constitutional History, or _Why the United States Wasn't
Always A Democracy, and What They Didn't Tell You in High School_.

Let me start with some deffanitions:

A _democracy_ is a nation in which the actions of government are determined
solely by popular vote.  The United States is more or less a democracy.

A _republic_ is a nation in which the actions of government are
determined by the whims of a ruling elite, but strictly limited by a
constitution.  A republic can be partly democratic, but can't be
a true democracy.  The power to make certain decisions is not
given to the people; those decisions are made permanently by
the republic's founders.  Rome used to have a republic.

Now - although they didn't teach you this in civics class - the US
was founded as a _republic_, with minor twinges of democracy.  TheL
only part of the government that was even directly elected was the
House of Representatives - just a logical sixth of the whole shebang.
Everyone else was appointed by elected officials, or appointed by
appointed officials.  There were numerous property qualifications
for voting.  The powers of the Federal Government were restricted to
a short, explicitly enumerated list, and a Bill of Rights was added
as a sort of last-ditch backstop in case things got way out of
control.

Why?  The conventional liberal view, which is what they taught you
in civics class, is that the Founding Parents were a bunch of snobby
aristocratic haw-haws who didn't want the proles butting in.  

The reality is that the Founders were _afraid of democracy_.  Afraid?
Whatever for?  Democracy's the greatest thing since motherhood and
apple pie.

Not.

The problem with a democracy, Jenni, is its vulnerability to what us
political wonks call "tyranny of the majority."  If 51% of the
population decides that all the Jews should be locked in cattle cars
and deloused with Zyklon-B, that's what happens.  If 51% of the
population decides it wants to LOCK people in a CELL for the REST of
their LIVES, for owning a PLANT that grows wild ANYWHERE on the
PLANET, that's what happens.  

If 51% of the population decides that one Jenni Sheehey of State
College, Pennsylvania, should be repeatedly raped by bull kangaroos,
what does a respectful & obedient little hitlerjugend like you do?

Bend over and spread your legs?

(In the next round: Jenni asks where the Constitution gives
 you the right to use drugs.)

I want to apologize to the good peevers in Scotland and elsewhere
for indulging in tedious discussions of American political history;
hopefully you'll find it vaguely amusing in a cruel sort of way
like watching a wheelchair-bound ex-rugby-jock trying to climb
a flight of stairs.

>>Peeve: people of such feeble moral sense that they have to latch onto their
>>neighbors', like ants in a flood-ball.  Look, peaches, _you_ might think
>>everything that's legal is right and everything that's illegal is wrong,
>>but some of us have a less sheeplike view of life, and we don't appreciate
>>being sheared along with the rest of the flock.
>
>Peeve: People who assume that everyone who disagrees with them has
>poorly thought out views.

No.  That's not what I said at all.  Looks like I'll need to be a little
clearer, for the philosophically impaired.

A _moral sense_ is a conscience: a little piece of your mind that
tells you when an act is _wrong_ and when it isn't.  People in 
civilized societies are supposed to have these.

Unfortunately, not everyone does.  So people gang together, decide
on a collective moral sense, and set up laws and punishments
to make it accord with the more common "practical sense."

Now: what you're saying, with this "drugs are _wrong_ because they're
illegal" bit, is that _you don't have a moral sense of your own_.
Instead you've adopted the collective morals of society, the
aforesaid ball of ants.  So using drugs is wrong, because it's
illegal.  Likewise, murder is wrong, because it's illegal.  But if
Pennsylvania legalized murder, would you feel free to kill people
on a lark?

Somehow, I doubt it.  Which tells me that maybe you do have a
conscience of your own, however weak and flimsy.  Now why don't
you go extend that conscience to the question at hand - and
tell us whether _you yourself_ think using drugs is right, or
wrong?

>>When I think the law is wrong, I _break_ it.
>
>Peeve: People who think that disobedience is better than reform.

Yup.  Mahatma Gandhi, in particular, is a major peeve of Jenni's.
What on earth was he doing disobeying the law of India?  He
should have been petitioning Parliament to reform the law!  What
a scoundrel.

Likewise, of course, George Washington.  Who grew hemp on his farm,
although the evidence is ambiguous as to whether or not he smoked
any of it.

>>The company, after all, will be first-rate; could I
>>mind a spot in the same infernal circle as Samuel Adams, Nat Turner, Henry
>>David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, and Edward Abbey?
>
>Well, I think you'd have to call Samuel Adams more of a reformer

Samuel Adams, for those of us with lagging memories, organized the
Boston Tea Party.  The Boston Tea Party, for those of us with
severely lagging memories, was not a bunch of rich yuppies sitting
around the patio with cups of lapsang soochong, discussing lawsuits
and petitions and protest votes.

>and, as I recall, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not remiss in
>"rendering unto Caesar".

"As you recall?"  Tell the truth, Jenni - does your lifespan even
OVERLAP with Martin Luther King's?  I thought not.

Now be a good girl, buy a history book, and find out what a "Jim
Crow" law is.  And investigate the concept of a "sit-in."  And while
you're at it you might want to look up "civil disobedience" in the
dictionary.

c
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