[MD] Sin Part 1

[Platt Holden]

> [Platt]
> When a politician proposes a law "in the public interest," run for your
> life. All tyrannies torture, murder and enslave in the name of the
> "public interest." 
> 
> [Case]
> We should also be wary of slick talking sloganeers. In Ronald Reagan's
> 1st inaugural speech he echoed his strongest campaign theme. These words
> fueled a revolution in American politics. 
> 
> "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem;
> government is the problem."
> 
> I used to despair at the obscenity of these words. I was more horrified
> that they stuck. The U.S. Government is government of the people, by the
> people and for the people. With a smile on his face the most influential
> politician of the last half of the 20th century said the "We the people"
> could not solve our problems and that "We the people" were the problem.
> 
> This stuck as a general idea but what Reagan said was actually not a
> general condemnation of "We the people". We was talking about a specific
> problem that "We the people" were incompetent to solve. That problem was
> inflation. Earlier in his speech he had said:
> 
> "You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means,
> but for only a limited period of time. Why then should we think that
> collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?"
> 
> By the end of his two terms of office he ran up more federal debt than
> ALL of his predecessors combined. There has been no abatement of
> hypocrisy in his wake or in his shadow.

[Platt]
Your "horror" was overwhelmingly approved twice by "we the people." 
Then you conveniently forget that the growth in federal debt ended the 
Cold War, and Reaganomics led to a surplus in later years.

[Case]
> As you pointed out earlier there is not much starvation in America
> neither has there all that much tyranny torture, murder and enslavement
> in the name of the "public interest." The rare exceptions have been over
> the past six year in U.S. detention centers operated on foreign soil.

[Platt]
I have no problem with waterboarding to elicit information that will 
save lives.  As for enslavement, keep in mind taxes are a form of 
slavery in that you are forced at the point of a gun to turn over to 
others the product of your work.      

> > [Case]
> > In our society is it the job of the legislature to establish public
> > priorities and to set the rules of the game. This is explained at
> > considerable length in the Constitution.
> 
> [Platt]
> To be overruled by the Supreme Court when found to violate individual
> rights.
> 
> [Case]
> This is how our system is supposed to work. The role of the court is to
> weigh the work of the legislature in light of the principles laid out in
> the constitution. That conservatives have led the public smearing of
> this institution is instructive.

[Platt]
Conservatives criticize the court when it fails to do its duty in 
protecting individual rights, like the abominable decision to allow 
government to take private property and hand it to private developers 
in order to raise the tax base.

[Case]
> You are in favor of the legislature seeking to limit the rights of the
> individual? You condemn the court for upholding them? How does that
> square with all of your Randian ravings?

[Platt]
I'm in favor of laws that free people from the heavy hand of religious 
and barbaric secular laws. So you favor such laws?   

> [Platt]
> Be permission of a commissar. In the U.S. private property is a right,
> not a grant from government.
> 
> [Case]
> If as you say the Constitution grants and secures individual property
> rights then indeed they are granted by the government. The documents
> also spell out how individual rights can be limited and what rights are
> the domain of the states. It is a document granting rights and
> establishing how values will be determined.

[Platt]
Again I remind you that for the founders the rights to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness came from God, not government. Today, we know
those rights come from intellect, not government. (See Pirsig)  

> > [Case]
> > ...granting personhood to a social institution is scary. I am not
> > alone. As I said before, Jefferson and Adam Smith were both fearful of
> > the unrestrained accumulation of economic power this represents.
> 
> [Platt}
> History has proved both wrong.
> 
> [Case]
> Enron, junk bonds, corporate raiders? Try and sell that to the airline
> employees who billions of dollar of pension funds vanished into the air
> as if dumped in mid-flight from a corporate jumbo jet.

[Platt] A few bad apples and you condemn the whole barrel. Your life
depends on corporations from the food you eat to the computer you
use to attack corporations.

> [Platt]
> Examples of research done at public expense? The space program perhaps?
> I'm sure you are are aware that many companies have research
> departments, especially drug companies who have saved countless lives
> not to mention the suffering they've relieved.
> 
> [Case]
> Yes the space program. We are still coasting on that one. But
> pharmaceuticals are a better example. The development of new drugs
> depends on research in medicine, biology, biochemistry and a host of
> other fields. It depends on the furtherance of PURE research. That is
> research done for purely theoretical or other reasons. It is thrives in
> academic freedom where the best minds can pursuer knowledge for its own
> sake. It allows for serendipity where surprising and revolutionary ideas
> develop for unexpected sources.
> 
> Once the theoretical heavy lifting is done at public expense it is
> distributed freely to the public. Private companies are equipped then to
> take these results at no expense and develop them into marketable
> products. Drug companies primary do research in the form of testing of
> specific compounds and manufacturing technique to make the products
> theory tells them should work. What pure research they invest it is
> mainly targeted at hastening development of knowledge where the trails
> have already been blazed. You call them fine examples of the capitalist
> system at work. I call them carpetbaggers.

I pray you never need the products of the drug companies.