From: Randall Parker 

In , note these
cogitations from blucy{at}mediaone.net Bill Lucy:
> > So if you wanted to go get some newspapers and magazines you wouldn't
> > notice? You wouldn't notice in a bookstore? You wouldn't notice in a
> > department store?
> Nope. You're reacting as someone who sees these things everyday, Randall. If
> you never saw them, you'd never miss them. That's a "freedom from
want"
issue,
> anyway.

No it isn't. Books and mags and newspapers are key to a healthy civil society.

> > You are missing a far deeper point: A society's health depends on the
> > civic mindedness of a fairly small minority of its members.
> Agreed. But many of those get arrested and get put in jail in Puerto Rico,
too.
> Some of them are still in jail, due to recent events (I chose Puerto Rico for
a
> reason).

They are not getting arrested for speaking out, writing, talking. They also
are probably not being systematically tortured in labour camps. You ever
read Against All Hope by Armando Valladares?


> Perhaps I am grasping. But it's still true. We can do a number of
comparisons,
> and you or I would reach. In the end, I really don't think I'd be free in
Cuba.
> But that's the view of someone who has been politically active as an American
> citizen since I can remember. As said before, I don't have the tools to
> determine whether I'm really free, because I'm encumbered by what I
"know" is
> freedom.

You are beginning to sound like Wittgenstein or the deconstructionists. If
we can't determine whether we are free then the term becomes a pointless
and meaningless concept. If this is so unknowable there is no point to even
striving.

> Please understand this one thing. If you think that I care one whit if I lose
> my job with the State of Illinois, you don't know me.

If you were a resident of Cuba and had a job with their government you
_would_ care about whether you lost your job because you would care about
not having yourself and family starve to death.

>I have had more than one
> person attempt to "muzzle" me (within the last months, there was the
Assistant
> Director of the Department of Aging who tried), and I have carried on.

The stakes were low.

When I worked at GM I always spoke my mind on subjects that caused a few
young engineers to ask me "Aren't you afraid to say that?". My
response was always something along the line of "What's the worse they
can do to me? Fire me? Is this the only job in the world?". Also
"Do they need me less than I need them? I don't think so."

> C'mon, Randall, you know me better than that. 

Bill, this is actually how I expected you to behave. But in a totalitarian
system I doubt that you'd behave that way. I know I wouldn't.

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