The Fallacy In Conservative Logic, As Simple As Can Be

When conservatives start in on you about what they claim they have to pay for things you use, ask them if they have toll booths at the end of their driveways to pay a per-use fare for driving on public roads. If they fly, ask them if they had to go through yet another gated entry system than the rest of us who pool our resources so that whoever needs a public service, regardless that others who also pay for it don't use it, has it available when needed.

You pay for things that they use that you don't. They never mention those things. Sit for a moment and think of all the public things that are available to us as individuals, and consider those things which you or your family don't personally use. You're paying for things that others use, that you don't. We do that because we share the burden.

But you can bet your butt that anytime one of the constipated has to pay a penny for someone else's use, they're indignant to the point of secession, sedition, and...silliness.

I'm proud to say that I pitch in for others' use, because I know that others are pitching in for mine! It's this very thing that makes us a republic - that is to say, a form of government where we refuse to allow the mob to trample the individual - instead of a mob-rule pure democracy.

Response to BBC article, link at bottom

Democracy is an experiment two-thousand years in process. The American version is a constitution-based federal republic with a strong tradition of democracy. The very description of our type of government gives a hint that reason need not play a part in it. True democracies can have the effect of marginalizing minorities, a blow against reason, although reason would seem to favor a true democracy. But reason isn't the metier of the masses, at least not when they act like a mass...or mob.

Rational principles would also seem to favor an intellect-based rule, but that experiment ended badly for the Soviet Union, and most other Leninist-Communist states.

I suspect that we'll blunder on until someone disproves the capitalistic model prevalent in democracies today, if Big Banking hasn't already done that and we're just too unreasonable to see it.

From the article 'A Point of View: The enduring appeal of Sherlock Holmes' at the link found here .