Jean-Francois Avon asked me to forward this to the list. It is part of a conversation that He and I had last week. The Crypto Relevance if any is in the attitudes we are discussing, and in the the last couple paragraphs of Mr. Avon's writing. Forwarded message:
From jf_avon@citenet.net Fri Sep 27 23:59:05 1996 Message-Id: <9609280545.AB01676@cti02.citenet.net> Comments: Authenticated sender is <jf_avon@pop.citenet.net> From: "Jean-Francois Avon" <jf_avon@citenet.net> Organization: JFA Technologies, Montreal, QC, Canada To: snow <snow@smoke.suba.com> Date: Sat, 28 Sep 1996 01:45:30 -0500 Subject: The attitude of US peoples toward govt WAS: [AP stuff] Priority: normal X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v2.32)
On 27 Sep 96 at 20:01, snow wrote:
When I talked about driving for 48 hours straight, I was trying to impart an idea that many midwestern people are rasied with, the total VASTNESS of the world. We (midwesterners, and some of the westerners, and a lot of older people (in their 60's & 70's) honestly believe deep down inside that this country is too vast to effectively control that the government simply CAN'T do it. They can't enforce any control they wish to have with the army, because WE have guns, and a lot of us are ex-army (a little older, a little slower, a HELL of a lot more devious and a lot less impetuious<sp>). We simply don't accept the fact that any one CAN control us.
This might be why I liked NM, and AZ and TX. I can understand the feeling you describe as you can barely escape it while visiting the place. I suppose our canadian politicians also understood that: c.f. Bill C-68 :(
Anyway, [the person's] point was that [some type of software] took control and decesions out of peoples hands, and that is why it was a market sucess. This I see as a European disease, the looking to government & the church for the solutions to every day problems.
That is the feudalist attitude and philosophy. Absolutely disgusting. Although we have, here in Quebec, french roots and civil laws based on the Napoleon Code (Common Law everywhere in Canada except in QC), the population have a very american way of seeing life. Every time I have political discussion with French from France, the feudal mentality always surfaces up and I always have problems with them. They have a hierarchy-worshiping attitude, coupled with an abdication of the power of their own reason (at the individual level). In short, they are brought-up to become yes-men. It litterally gives me an uncomfortable feeling in my guts. Disgusting.
The original Colonists didn't have that attitude (well, they did to some degree, but not the people on the edges) In fact the attitude really didn't develop fully in this country until the 1920's, and still hasn't caught on everywhere.
Roosevelt and his New Deal... I got the chance to find a magazine who explained how the Federal Reserve was created. Politicians sneaking into trains as "duck hunters", grand political socialistic schemes sprung on peoples in secret, etc. The magazine did not say that but I am leaning on the Objectivist side and I tend to read what *is* written...
politicians started paying for votes with government largess
As a 70 years old englishmen, ex-company managing president & very friend of mine once said: Everyday, they buy us with our own money...
These two attitudes are pretty diametrically opposed, but coupled it with a school system that doesn't encourage extra-curriculer thought, and you have some pretty incosistent people.
Unfortunately, you are absolutely right.
[slight topic drift...] I was wondering lately... Words have a lot of power. They are the building blocks we use to materialize concepts. Think about the word "Government". You would think of it as a body that governs. But the american peoples think the government ought to be a body that acts under a mandate to administrate and oversee certain things.
The very word "govt" seems to (conceptually) almost "justify" the actions of present govts, while any other word (like, for example, "overseers", "Mandated", etc) would stress out that they are under *our* orders (and nowadays, exceeding their mandate).
Maybe we should start using a new word to describe *exactly" what it is that they ought to be doing. Doing so would also stress out *exactly* what they are pulling on us...
Comments?
jfa
Please e-mail me directly since I am not on cypherpunks anymore. Thanks. Jean-Francois Avon, Pierrefonds (Montreal) QC Canada DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee Finest Limoges porcelain and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants physicists and engineers, LabView programing PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 ID# 5B51964D : 152ACCBCD4A481B0 254011193237822C
Petro, Christopher C. petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff> snow@smoke.suba.com