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heres a lesson that Americans learned a long time ago: a government powerful enough to give you everything is a government powerful enough to take everything f
by thursday0987 6y ago
heres a lesson that Americans learned a long time ago:
a government powerful enough to give you everything is a government powerful enough to take everything from you.
- rbecker 6y agoAny useful government must be powerful enough to take everything away from you. How else could it, for example, punish murderers? Like it or not, this is true for literally every government in the world. So that's not a sensible counterargument to giving it the ability to help as well.
- gnusty_gnurc 6y agoThis sounds like a Ben Shapiro "but akshually" argument. American government was founded with the clear intention and understanding that power was derived from the consent of the governed. What you said is meaningless - of course they have firepower that makes resistance futile. But US government is fundamentally based in the protection of individual rights.
- rbecker 6y agoBut that's a different argument. You haven't shown any fault in my reasoning other than calling it meaningless. There may be arguments for why government shouldn't be able to give you everything (for example, the ones in your post), but "because then they can take everything away" isn't it, since every government in the world can already do that, both in theory and in practice.
- gnusty_gnurc 6y agoThe American tradition is fundamentally skeptical towards governmental power. This is a disposition and ideal. Clearly we can violate that ideal at any point. But it's like saying that dieting is useless cause you can gorge on food whenever you want to.
- krapp 6y agoThat's not a lesson that Americans ever "learned," that's an axiom that some Americans assume to be universal across the culture.