Wednesday 30 November 2011

The Choice: coerce or let-die

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Much of the insanity in modern politics is sustained because the alternatives seems impossible: which are essentially two-fold.

When people are behaving badly (I mean in such a way as to destroy the possibility of a Good society) then they must either be coerced into behaving well and/or prevented from behaving badly, which means using whatever sanctions are effective, which may mean severe sanctions (including loss of their freedom of choice);

or they must take the consequences of their actions, which means not getting any assistance from legitimate authority, and these consequences may be severe - up to and including letting people die (eg of hunger or disease) including letting children die.

Since modern, compassionate people cannot make this kind of tough decision (at least not by their chosen methods of decision-making), not wanting to choose and adopt either of these courses of action because the one is illiberal/ authoritarian and the other is cruel/ selfish; then the necessity of choice is denied and destructive mass processes are being allowed to continue until the point when matters are necessarily taken out of the hands of compassionate people by replacing them with non-compassionate people and/ or events are overtaken by natural disaster (famine, epidemic, slaughter).

The choice cannot, therefore, be avoided but only delayed; until such a point that brute necessity supervenes.

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