Hows come none of my students can think this clearly? This is a comment taken from Iraq the Model, see link on the sidebar. The discussion is the failure of socialism. Voltaire doesn't realize that there will be other people as smart as him who realize the danger of selfishness in democracy. Sacrifice is always king and the last will be first. But as for Lotus practitioners, I guess we are doomed to be spaced out like hippies at a rich kids pot party. And after reading, please review "The Zen Warrior is a Liberal and a Conservative" in November 2004.
Thanks Solburger!
Heres my thought in response to burly's posting this: Bertrand de Jouvend write in The Ethics of Redistribution;
"Redisdribution is condemned... for for underminig the sense of personal resposibility. It does this by transferring authority for crucial life-decisions from the the individuals who make them to the State. By catering for all the basic needs of the individual, the State leaves him with authority only in the sphere of determining how to spend his pocket money. "
My feeling abou this undermining of personal responsibility is that when subjective qualities like "needs" and "feelings" are elevated above the more objective values of "I made it myself" (earned value) and "It was given to me for a reason" (inherited funds passed within a family) people start to pay more attention to the bellyachers, and give more credence to the ones who whine loudest.
While it is no bad thing to be benevolent, and care for those who truly are disadvantaged (like the mentally or physically handicapped for instance) it is much more possible that human nature will take over and that people will start to compete for who's the most miserable, and thus deserving, of a bigger and bigger piece of "whats thiers" irregardless of wether or not it started out theirs in the first place. To paraphrase: (Forgive my bad translation of the french original)
Voltaire once scoffed "Democracy won't work, because once people figure out thay can vote themselves the largesse of the government, you're sunk."
FLORA