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date	2011.06.04.06.01.52;	author baccala;	state Exp;
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date	2011.04.26.01.24.40;	author baccala;	state Exp;
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Mercuriou: "'Good corporate citizens' -- there are none!  A bunch of
'special interests' that lobby to for this restriction or that
exemption and you cook up some convoluted, five hundred page law that
gets another five hundred pages of regulations tacked on by the
bureaucrats -- oh, it keeps the lawyers busy!"





Mercuriou: "That's quite an agenda!  Why do you need to do all that
with the government?  You talk so much about a cooperative government,
but coercion is the very essence of government!  Coercion is what sets
government apart from a business, or a charity, or an individual.
Government is either picking your pocket or twisting your arm, so
you're saying that we need a coercive society to acheive those goals.
Why?"

Wye: "Well, life is coercive, captain.  You're forced to build shelter
or you'll freeze.  You're forced to plow and harvest or you'll starve.
We have certain social goals that we achieve through tax funding and
government regulation.  We're also careful to check and restrain the
power of government through constitutional law and free elections."

Mercuriou: "Why not just put good leaders in positions of authority to
begin with?  Then you wouldn't need the government."

Wye laughed.

Wye: "Well, that'd be Utopia, but unfortunately we do need the
government.  There's always the criminal element who thinks that the
rules don't apply to them, eh, _Captain_?"

Mercuriou: "I've got a better idea - get rid of the capitalists!"

Wye: "How?  Like the Bolsheviks?  Should we use clubs, hypothermia,
or firing squads?"

Mercuriou: "Just stop working for them!  Stop supporting them!
'Just say no' to their nightmare 'system'!"

Wye: "Captain, most people _want_ capitalism!  Progressives have spent
much of the twentieth century convincing voters that some government
controls are needed, but most people want a path to prosperity!"

Mercuriou: "Well, then maybe your system of government is part of the
problem!  If the majority want a bunch of self-serving creeps to be
their leaders, then maybe we need to get rid of the majority!"




Wye: "Yes, even _criminals_ are entitled to freedom!  We provide them
with lawyers, ensure them fair trials..."

Mercuriou: "Fair trials!  Senator, _I'm_one_of_those_criminals_!
Because I smoke marijuana!  Because I copy books and software from 'C'
drive to 'D' drive!  Because I don't concede to this demented democracy
that it can control every aspect of my life, and all your
_fair_trials_ are is a convoluted route to a jail cell!  And then you
sit there are talk about 'freedom'!  What freedom?  The freedom to
invade people's homes with guns because there's a hundred million of
you and only ten million of us?"

Wye: "Captain, the entire operation of our government is based on
persuasion.  That's why every four years men contest to become
President, and the way they do that is through giving speechs, running
advertisements, talking to voters, and the whole point is to persuade,
captain, persuade, not force, people to vote for them."

Mercuriou: "So humanity has abandoned force and this great event goes
by the name of democracy!  Now why do you have the highest incarceration
rate on the planet?"





Mercuriou: "What's a dictatorship?  Anything that isn't a democracy?
And then you talk about 'freedom'!  Turn on the T.V!  Watch the police
slam people to the ground and drag them off in cuffs!  Half of them
have done nothing more than fire up a marijuana joint!  That's your
'freedom'!"

Wye: "It's what The People want!"

Mercuriou: "Oh, get off re-re-repeat!  There are no 'People'!  It's
just propaganda!"






% Wye stared at the screen, then tacked.

Wye: "Democracy is not perfect, Captain, but if you look around the world,
it's the best we've got."

Mercuriou: "Well, since it dominates the world at gunpoint, that's not
really a fair comparison.  Anyway, judge democracy by its results!
The majority don't want good leaders.  No, I take that back.  They
want good leaders, but they can't tell the difference -- they're
incompetent.  So they've picked about the most selfish bastards you'd
ever want to meet, with this nightmare capitalist system to be jammed
down everyone's throats, and they've backed it all up with the world's
biggest prison system and the most crushing military juggernaut ever.
And this time, nobody can say it isn't really a democracy, nobody can
say one man took over the government, nobody can say the dissidents
were 'disappeared', nobody can say we don't have freedom of speech or
freedom of the press.  Nobody can claim that this isn't really what
the majority of the American people want."

Wye: "Well, that's the bottom line then, Captain.  It's what the
majority of Americans want."





Mercuriou: "'The people of this planet'; you don't even fool around
with 'the people of this nation' anymore, you're onto global
democracy!"

Wye: "Yes, the people of this planet!  You should speak to some of
them who have lived under dictatorship!  Let me explain the
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