codarac wrote:
pbcoll wrote:
The quote is true enough if you live in North Korea, Botswana, Saudi Arabia, etc. In functioning democracies, one is not 'at the first word of complaint,' 'bound, imprisoned, shot, judged, condemned, banished, sacrificed, sold.' To pretend that this quote applies to the sort of places most WP members live in is petty and petulant.
I would say about half of the things referred to in the quote
do apply to the functioning democracy that is Britain.
That's not to say I think the problem is 'government' in itself so much as bad government, though of course all governments have the potential to go bad.
Let's not exaggerate how things are in Britain: regarding 'shot' there's no death penalty and the police don't shoot at a whim, as for 'sold' slavery was abolished a long time ago, etc. Whereas for example, someone in my family, had he not fled in the nick of time from the country he was in at the time, would have been certainly tortured and probably executed for the crimes of being a student and holding a certain passport, someone else in my family was nearly executed for the crime of privately badmouthing the government, etc.
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I am the steppenwolf that never learned to dance. (Sedaka)
El hombre es una bestia famélica, envidiosa e insaciable. (Francisco Tario)
I'm male by the way (yes, I know my avatar is misleading).
14 Jun 2010, 6:30 pm
