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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Changing ideas
Message-ID: <763@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Sep-85 11:44:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.763
Posted: Wed Sep 18 11:44:16 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Sep-85 17:45:50 EDT
References: <8509171814.AA23399@ucbopal.Berkeley.Edu>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 24
Summary: 

In article <8509171814.AA23399@ucbopal.Berkeley.Edu> mwm@UCBOPAL.CC (Mike  Meyer, I'll be mellow when I'm dead) writes:
> The answer to this question can be found in a 130 year old quote from Thomas
> Macaulay (British historian, circa 1857):
> 
>         The day will come when (in the United States) a multitude of
>         people will choose the legislature. Is it possible to doubt
>         what sort of a legislature will be chosen? On the one side is
>         a statesman preaching patience, respect for rights, strict
>         observance of public faith. On the other is a demagogue ranting
>         about the tyranny of capitalism and usurers asking why anybody
>         should be permitted to drink champagne and to ride in a carriage 
>         while thousands of honest people are in want of necessaries.
>         Which of the candidates is likely to be preferred by a workman?
>         . . . When Society has entered on this downward progress, either
>         civilization or liberty must perish.

A classic false dilemma.  It's amusing that someone still quotes this
even in the face of today's societies where poverty is trivial by the
standard's of Macaulay's time, made so by a combination of great prosperity
and substantial redistribution.  Yet respect for rights is not significantly
different (except perhaps in more egalitarian ways) than in his time.
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh