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honorman
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137

Posted 9/17/2003 10:18 AM (GMT -6)

"Society in very state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."

DLW
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457

Posted 9/17/2003 10:53 AM (GMT -6)

quote:
Originally posted by honorman

"Society in very state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."

Society is a useful fiction.

It all depends on whether one's ox is getting gored or not just how evil Gov't is. Paine was writing at a time when gov't was usually controlled by the aristocracy and a burden on the businessman. Nowadays are different...

Property rights must be defined, but they exist due to our sinfulness and, hence, they need to be regulated to prevent the rich from taking advantage of the poor(rough translation of Thomas Aquinas).
dlw

Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes."

Tigress
Registered Member

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1252

Posted 9/17/2003 11:21 AM (GMT -6)

Doesn't the success of a government depend more than anything else upon the comfort and contentment of the people being governed? I mean the Europeans that came over to the U.S. 300 years ago left not only to worship freely but also to purchase their own land so that they could essentially govern themselves. Granted they were still subject to the crowns of their countries, but they still were able live much more comfortably if they worked hard enough to make their homes that way. A lot of the people in Europe simply couldn't own land because there wasn't enough good land to go around at an affordable price. But in the U.S. there was so much land for the taking that people could keep expanding and settling westward. What's gonna happen in a few centuries when even the U.S. runs out of property for people to purchase as their own personal homesteads? Will there be anarchy? Will our government be able to withstand the demands of a crowded people? And what could the government even do to help people in this situation?

I remember that in one of my classes at Bethel, the prof. said that in feudal times certain people were chosen to be either priests and nuns or marriable from the time of their births because there weren't enough marriable men around and because there wasn't enough property for every individual or couple to own. The Church was the main government during that time, and that was how they dealt with it. Now we're living in a democracy that's the first of its kind and has already been around much longer than a lot of other forms of government have been. How long will our democracy really last? Again, if the people rise up because of discomfort, can it really last? Or will it simply go the way of all governments?

Tigress

"Name a shrub after me. Preferably one that's prickly and difficult to eradicate."

-Captain Jack Aubrey
"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World"

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