From: fofp@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes)
Newsgroups: uk.misc
Subject: Re: Liberties (was Re: Transport subsidies - Was: Car Parking)
Date: 18 Dec 92 14:30:19 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk writes:

>In article <29333@castle.ed.ac.uk>, fofp@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes) writes:

>[I've snipped some of the rather paranoid stuff about encroachments of liberty]

>> I'd just ask that you start caring about people's rights and freedoms,
>> whether they're poor or rich, because once those freedoms have gone, they
>> can lose a lot more than health care entitlement. People can, and do
>> lose their lives. 
>> 
>Look. None of us want people to lose their rights and freedoms. Indeed many of
>us urgently want this country to be much freer and have more regard for basic
>rights. But no-one (I think) apart from you believes that National Health Care
>is the first step along the road to a police state.

Me neither. The point you start towards that is when payment towards it
is mandatory on pain of imprisonment. The minute that happens, the
government has the right to your property without your consent. 


> One of the basic human
>rights is a right to good health.

Indeed but not the right to *force* someone else to provide it. If a
doctor has to work to provide it free, and he is forced to do so
involuntarily then he's a slave. I can't see it as a step forward to
give someone a "right" to health if it makes someone else a slave.

>> Think of what you
>> regard as the worst government on the Earth. Would you be willing to
>> give them the same powers over you and your family? Would you still do
>> it if They could choose which principles were that important enough to
>> override individual freedom?

>We are not talking about the worst government on earth. There are governments
>and governments.

And governments change.

>THe UK government is comparatively free and reasonable.
>Because parliament, which appoints the government, is democratically elected
>and accountable, and has a majority of honest members who are interested
>genuinely in the welfare of their constituents we are comparatively safe from
>the excesses of a Pol Pot or a Stalin.

But the rights of government to purloin people's property are now
established. A different government might easily decide to purloin more
property in the name of other "principles" they regarded as more
important than freedom. You may think "it could never happen here" but I
suspect that there have been a lot of places in the world where people
figured that. People who believe that are the ones least on their guard.
You mentioned that the US is one of the most free countries on Earth?
The Founding Fathers advocated that people always be on guard against
government, that's one of the reasons there's a right to bear arms in
the Constitution - to allow the people to protect themselves from
government. The US government now routinely breaks several articles of
the US Constitution.

>> You don't trust people. You might have a point. 
>> 
>> I don't trust government. The 20th century makes it damn obvious that I
>> have a point.
>> 
>No. It makes it obvious that you are paranoid and deluding yourself. In Britain
>we have never had an entirely despotic government. In the USA there has never
>been an entirely despotic government.

Governments don't have to act like Kmer Rouge to seriously limit freedom.

>The only despotic governments in Western
>Europe were unsuccesful and did not last long: they were quickly replaced by
>democracies which have more than made up for their predecessors' mistakes. Even
>the longest-lasting despotic government, in the USSR, has now fallen and could
>be very quickly replaced by fair effective government if the US were not so
>hung up on the free market.

Why limit yourself to Western Europe? You've presumably alluded to
Hitler here as a "despotic government". He was elected and his
government didn't just disappear, a lot of people died to make that
happen. A lot more died in fact than you could seriously imagine
happening under a voluntary health care system, so even on that score,
allowing government force loses out.

>> "Those who would trade their liberty for security, deserve neither." 

>And those who see reductions of liberty in social security are deluding
>themselves.

The reduction in liberty doesn't come from the social security, it comes
when people are *forced* to subscribe to it whether they want to or not.


>Stephen Wilcox   

FoFP
Newsgroups: uk.misc