Text 3483, 69 rader
Skriven 2006-07-07 13:39:00 av Robert E Starr JR (3956.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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* * * This message was from Charlie Edmondson to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * *
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Josh Hill wrote:
> On Wed, 05 Jul 2006 09:05:42 -0700, Charlie Edmondson
> <edmondson@ieee.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Hi Josh,
>>I am sorry if I offended you, but it is interesting that you so reacted 
>>to my statements.  I did not mean to offend, I was merely commenting on 
>>your statements.
> 
> 
> Hi Charlie,
> 
> Thanks, and don't worry about it! A moment of ire and I never held it
> against you in general, and hope you don't hold my little outburst
> against me.
> 
> Your comments affected me the way they did because, unknowingly I'm
> sure, you were attacking some values that are very important to me.
> Emotionally, you might as well have called me, and so many of the good
> people I've known over the years, a criminal or a child molester. And
> I found it doubly disturbing because the accusation of Communism, even
> "hidden Communism," has historically been used in this country to
> destroy the careers of people who were anything but (and wouldn't have
> deserved to have had their careers destroyed even if they had been).
> 
> Just by way of explanation -- as I said, I'm sorry for the tiff. And I
> do hope there aren't any logical contradictions in what I've said,
> although I can't promise it, because, really, I don't think these
> issues are straightforward, and I don't think any of us know
> everything or have answered all of our moral questions or have always
> acted according to our moral principles. Which is one of the reasons I
> reacted as I did -- I've never been fond of ideologies, Marxist,
> Conservative, Liberal, what have you -- which pretend to offer the One
> Solution To All Our Ills, and I'm bothered when people pigeonhole me,
> e.g., as a "leftist" rather than the somewhat left-of-center, somewhat
> libertarian moderate who constantly questions his own assumptions that
> I am. Though I understand how that can happen in a bipolar discussion,
> in which both sides tend to raise the issues that are closer to their
> position.
> 
> To me, the question will never be whether big government is good or
> bad or welfare is good or bad or inheritance taxes are good or bad,
> but rather what size government will best serve us, what kind of
> public assistance will best serve us, what amount of inheritance tax
> (if any) will best serve us. I've found over the years that the
> answers are complicated ones, and that to some extent they can't be
> arrived at through any objective political philosophy, because
> different people place different values on different things.
> 
Hi Josh,
No problem.  I guess I was never really that effected by the communist 
witch hunts, so it was never that big a stigma to me.  It is just that 
we definitely disagree on the functions that government should perform, 
or at least how much of these functions government should perform.  In 
philosophy, I am probably a rational anarchist... 8-)

Charlie
                                                                               
                
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