[lit-ideas] On Liberal-Democratic Government and Education

From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:17:46 -0700
From an American standpoint, and in reacting against the British Monarchy,
we held as an ideal that power would be invested in the people and not in a
monarch, or a central government.   That remains a presupposition for many
of us.  Government does not own all the power and money and dole it out to
thankful citizens.  Government has only the power and money that citizens
and their representatives vote to give it.  

Then too we must be careful with the term "Liberal."  On this particular
matter I consider myself a Liberal.  I subscribe to Liberal-Democratic forms
of government.  But if in someone's thinking, the term "Liberal" has morphed
into "Socialism"; then the original meaning of "Liberal" has been abandoned.


In regard to the idea of a Liberal-Democratic State promoting positive
freedoms, that strikes me as unnecessary in the U.S.  We already have those
freedoms unless they have been proscribed through the legislative process.
This does imply that our government is in the business of "negative" rather
than "positive" legislation in regard to matters of freedom.

However, we Liberal-Democratic nations have come a long way from the
American Rebellion of the 18th century.   We have on occasion decided to
vote ourselves "entitlements."  These can be considered "positive"
legislation, but they needn't be.  A king could have decided to give his
people medical insurance, but in Liberal Democracies we have decided to vote
ourselves particular entitlements.  We agree to pay for them.  The money for
it comes from the tax payers.  This isn't governmental largesse but the
decisions of a majority of tax-payers in these Liberal Democracies.  I see
nothing wrong with the idea of people voting themselves "entitlements" -- as
long as they can afford to pay for them.

We might also consider that the experiences of Socialistic forms of
government, the extremes seen in both Fascism and Communism, and their
formulations for how people should be educated.  We agree, most of us, that
these systems of education have proved to be failures.   And since they
failed, why we would want to try these approaches again.  Are we smarter
now?   Have we discovered perfection in thought and deed?  I don't think so.
Who is smart and clever enough to decide what the people need to know?
Here in the U.S., in the manifest absence of such smart and clever people,
many of us fall back on the ideas of the American Rebels who believed the
people should have the right to do and think whatever they liked as long as
. . . and here we introduce negative legislation as required.  

Lawrence
[lit-ideas] On Liberal-Democratic Government and Education

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