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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Financing the government of a free society
Message-ID: <1607@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 1-Jul-85 13:04:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.1607
Posted: Mon Jul  1 13:04:12 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 1-Jul-85 13:30:06 EDT
References: <3841@alice.UUCP> 
Reply-To: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 51
Summary: 


>>If the government does not allow my neighbours to force me to go to
>>church, to have the "right" flowers in my garden, and so forth, my
>>freedom is thereby enhanced.  If the government supports my neighbours
>>in these things (as local governments so often do in the name of
>>democracy), my freedom is reduced.
>>  . . .
>>I fear social pressure to conformity more than I fear (here and now)
>>government controls on my behaviour.
>
>You seem to have indicated above that governments frequently support
>communities that put social pressure on individuals.  By taking the
>power to do this away from governments, we can take much of the bite
>out of social pressure, but we probably can't eliminate such pressure
>completely without using even more repressive government.
>
>>Martin Taylor
>
>                                                Mike Sykora

Nope. Our Western governments normally run under laws that protect people
against pressures for social conformity on most issues (not all; it can
go both ways).  The more local, and the more "democratic" (i.e. town-meeting
style) the government, the more likely is the pressure from government
to be toward social conformity.  Larger-scale government is more removed
from the pressures of a single social group, and is thus more likely
to work in favour of the individual as opposed to the group.  It isn't
more repressive government that can assist this relief from social pressure,
but more attention to the law as opposed to the local, here-and-now will
of the people.  That's what the ACLU and related groups are all about.
Is it why right-wingers dislike those groups so much?

In other postings, Sykora has claimed that a strong-willed individual
should be resistant to high-powered government propaganda, as well as
to social pressures from the neighbours.  The other side of that coin
is that this strong-willed individual is totally alone, relying on
internal insights as opposed to information that can be obtained from
outside sources.  Their own ideas prevail against rational argument,
as well as against the emotional force of social and propagandist
pressures.  There might be such people, but (a) they are probably few
in number, and (b) they would be unlikely to fit into any kind of
social structure such as humanity has evolved from, and now needs more
than ever it did.  Social humans NEED to be susceptible to social
pressures, and to accept a moderate degree of conformity, just as they
NEED to be able to display individualistic (eccentric) traits.  The
problem (as always) is to achieve a good balance.
-- 

Martin Taylor
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