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["clanSkeen" <sgian AT planetc.com>]

> And that is what I see from the theocrats who appear to
> be gaining ever greater power in my country. They are not comfortable with 
> having full freedom to live as they believe; they want to force others to 
> live the same.

I've come to more view it this way, although this may just be the first 
stage for all I know.  They want the government to officially say that they 
are officially right, and God is on their side, and the rest of us are 
second class citizens -- all of which makes them all the better since in 
their bigness and rightness they will tolerate us.  Now, Gene, I'm not 
saying this is the best approach for everyone, but because of a misspent 
youth I know the Bible pretty well and the history of religion in the US.  I 
have a picture taken of me coming out of a one of my corn patches in the 
fall with the tall browned corn all around carrying some ears of corn and 
sweat beaded on my face.  I tell the fundies that, sure, let's look at the 
Bible and follow everything it says 'kiver ta kiver", as they say.   So we 
thumb through and find the first commandment given to men after the fall 
(but not the first given to women) and I read "In the sweat of thy face 
shalt thou eat bread."   I ask them if it is in the sweat of their face that 
they eat bread.  No?  It is for me.  Go away and obey that commandment first 
before we go on to the next one.  You only need one or two people like me in 
a community to keep the fundies in chaos enough that they begin to quibble 
among themselves so much they leave the rest of us alone.

> I think that is a wonderful, utopian dream that is not compatible with our 
> complex modern life.

Social medicine is too, see below:

> Life has become such a challenge to the common man that he is unable to 
> deal effectively with all the choices he must make on a daily and yearly 
> basis. Most moderns are labor slaves who come home exhausted mentally, 
> unable to make further effort, who move further and further from our 
> independent homesteader dream we hold to be ideal. Those of us with a 
> homesteader mentality are in the extreme minority. Whether by purposeful 
> design or by technological advancement or some social evolution not 
> clearly understood, the modern worker is caught in a web of dependence 
> because he simply does not have the knowledge, the time, or the motivation 
> to change. I see no plausible way the dependent condition can be changed, 
> even if there was the understanding and the leadership to facilitate the 
> corrective process.

This same argument was made for continuing slavery in the US.  I don't 
advocate any proactive interference with it, just to note that it exist.  It 
will end only when very painful changes become inevitable.

> That would be true if the society became fully socialized. I see no 
> requirement for "none or all." I see partial socialism/collective 
> administration as more than an economic plan.

I do too, but my way of doing it would be the least socialism (or 
collectivism) the better ... in fact only if there is just no other way to 
do it.  There is no other way to administer laws, there is no other way to 
bring about interstate travel.  But there is another way to manage medicine 
... get the government completely and absolutely out of it  worlds without 
end, amen.

> Many other countries pay less and have superior health care for all 
> citizens. I envision a universal health care system wherein citizens are 
> rewarded for keeping themselves healthy but all make a contribution to the 
> system.

But there you have it, and rightly said too.  In most countries with good 
social medicine program, people with self-induced illnesses are 
perfunctorily treated and let die.   If you smoke your lungs out and get 
cancer, tens of thousands of dollars are not spent on you to keep you live 
another six months.  If you drink away your liver, the state doesn't pay for 
organ transplant.  Someone pointed out a blog of someone who had the usual 
list of imaginary illnesses of the day and was on enough chemical 
prescriptions to poison every rat in the city.  And yet when this person 
went to no less than three doctors and they all told her that all her health 
problems were because of morbid obesity, she became furious and declared 
them to be dolts.  Under the sort of social medicine systems that work, such 
a person is told "We've said what the problem is, don't bother the system 
any more."   But what most people with the shopping cart full of 
prescription drugs thinks when they advocate social medicine is that the 
state will endorse their hypochondria and buy them all the more drugs.

You notice that for the most part our socialist highway system doesn't pave 
the road right up to our front doors when we choose to live in the boonies. 
Same is true of social medicine programs.

James