Re: CHAT: conlangs and mental illness

John Cowan wrote:

> I think this results from the unwillingness on the part of powerful
> Americans to perceive less powerful, or powerless, Americans as
> fellow-countrymen.
Well, I doubt that.  My experience of radical conservatives (and living
in Texas I've met quite a lot of them) is that they feel that the government
has no business regulating society.  I was involved in political debate last
night, where in fact a person I knew made just that claim, saying that the
government has only the right to only to legislate about negative rights, i.e.,
those that say that a person does *not* have the right to kill someone,
a person does *not* have the right to do this or that, not positive rights,
which say that a person has a right *to* health care, a right *to* feeling
all snug and cozy in bed at night, and such.  They interpret the
ninth and tenth ammendments in the Bill of Rights, which read:

9. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

10. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively,
or to the people.

as protecting the rights of the businessman in addition to other classes of
society, and moreover just reinforcing the idea that the less government
the better.  They view the welfare state as often being legitimized by the
politics of classwarfare, which to be honest I think is often true.  (Though
this does not mean that I agree with their general idea; I don't).

So, anyways, it's not, though, that they think other Americans are somehow
lesser beings.  They think that, just on principle, the government has no
right to intervene in society.

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and
oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil
spirits at the dawn of day. - Thomas Jefferson
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