Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Roos_Girl
No, that way is not libertarian, it is anarchy. There are costs in going from anarchy to even limited government. Costs expressed as civic duties and responsibilities. You don't get to refuse being drafted because you might be randomly killed in service. Yet nearly all would choose the cost-benefit ratio that good government provides over the one that anarchy does.

Early in the Revolutionary War smallpox prevented Benedict Arnold from capturing Quebec, which likely is a case of G*d working in strange ways to protect us. George Washington ordered the entire Continental Army variolated as the best option science then had available to minimize the risk of smallpox. Variolation involved exposing people to the full strength smallpox virus in a way that then seemed to minimize its risk. About 1% died from variolation, but that risk seemed less than the risk of the natural disease (which George had survived). Modern science can explain how variolation takes longer than natural exposure for a generalized infection to develop yet gets the immune system involved early to fight back. They knew none of that. Vaccination with the relatively safe cowpox virus hadn't yet been discovered. They went with the best knowledge available. The soldiers weren't given a choice. And in the end deaths in smallpox for the war were about 1%, an historically low rate. There are some decisions you have to accept having made, by society, in your name, as a price for being part of that society. All you can do regarding those decisions is try to make the decision making process as good and honest as then present knowledge allows and can afford. If society has really done its best, you are stuck with the consequences even if a generation later they are lamented.

The Framers staked their lives, fortunes and sacred honor on improving their system of governance. They didn't want anarchy. They didn't want tyranny. They were trying to achieve a sweet spot with the most freedom possible given they were working with imperfect human beings. And they didn't get it right the first time. The Articles of Confederation didn't have enough of a federal government to work, so they had to add more with the Constitution. We have added so much unconstitutional junk to our government since the Constitution that we forget its first lesson: you can have too little government… even with that group of venerated sages trying to run it. No doubt we have a long road of cutting junk back to travel before we'll often trip over that lesson; still, we must not forget it.

45 posted on 07/03/2015 1:50:14 PM PDT by JohnBovenmyer (Obama been Liberal. Hope Change)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies ]


To: JohnBovenmyer

Thanks for that bit of history.

Okay, so if the variolation only had a 1% death rate, versus the 30% death rate of actually getting small pox, why did they only force it on the soldiers and not require it for the whole citizenry?


48 posted on 07/03/2015 2:06:55 PM PDT by Roos_Girl (The world is full of educated derelicts. - Calvin Coolidge)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 45 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson