I'm not convinced by one cherry-picked case, however appalling. I mean you could - on the other side - pick out terrible cases about places where there's ineffectual government and many kids miss altogether out on education, or where they're NOT taken by government from a home where they're being abused or whatever.
I agree about the need to be diligent about protecting our liberties, I agree that we need to be very cautious about giving them up to government, I'm just not so sure there's always a direct and equivalent link between "government sponsored safety net" and loss of liberties.
Freedom can also be 'just another word for nothing left to lose'. How do you weigh up the freedom of a well-educated person who has a good, steady job, to choose to holiday in Fiji every year thanks to a tax-cut versus the loss of freedom of a beneficiary to have enough support to be able to buy groceries to feed her family, due to government measures enacted to 'tighten-up' the welfare system in part to close the budget gap created by the tax-cut? That choice is exactly what has happened here in NZ - we see the effects of it everyday at the Centre.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-07-13 07:17 pm (UTC)I agree about the need to be diligent about protecting our liberties, I agree that we need to be very cautious about giving them up to government, I'm just not so sure there's always a direct and equivalent link between "government sponsored safety net" and loss of liberties.
Freedom can also be 'just another word for nothing left to lose'. How do you weigh up the freedom of a well-educated person who has a good, steady job, to choose to holiday in Fiji every year thanks to a tax-cut versus the loss of freedom of a beneficiary to have enough support to be able to buy groceries to feed her family, due to government measures enacted to 'tighten-up' the welfare system in part to close the budget gap created by the tax-cut? That choice is exactly what has happened here in NZ - we see the effects of it everyday at the Centre.