NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/sci/crypt/4572

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-10 | 5.8 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!nntp1.radiomail.net!fernwood!autodesk!drake
From: [e-mail] (Dan Drake)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: Finally! We're getting somewhere.
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 11 Nov 92 02:29:48 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Autodesk Inc., Sausalito CA, USA
Lines: 119

[e-mail] (Bohdan Tashchuk) writes:
> I was going to mail a reply to this, but decided that it might be of some
> interest to foreign readers.
>
> This doesn't have that much to do with sci.crypt anymore. Stop reading now if
> you're not interested in the politics behind why so many here are opposed to
> key registration.

I'll second that, if not very much else in the message.

So why the hell do we have to go insulting each other's systems?  I love
our written Constitution and honor the fact that we have turned
Amendment into a proper noun.  But hey, I still see that cynical old
Tocqueville's point when he said something like "They tried to make a
system so perfect that men would not have to be virtuous." Ouch.  No,
our Constitution isn't THAT perfect.

The English constitutional approach relies on the virtue and seems to
pride itself on not being a system.  It isn't perfect either.

> First of all, if your system worked all that well in the 1770's, my email
> address today would also end in ".uk". But it doesn't. So, "well" is quite
> relative. In my opinion the US is the older republic.

It worked pretty well in England, by contemporary standards.  In their
overseas possessions, though, they were oppressive and just plain
stupid; the Englishmen in America refused to be treated that way; and so
we (or those of our ancestors who happened to be on this side of the
water) pulled away long before the countries would have been pulled
apart anyway by their sheer weight.

(I leave it to our transatlantic cousins to point out that the United
*Kingdom* is a democracy, not a republic, and the people apparently want
to keep it that way.)

Mr. Tashchuck now quotes from a document that free persons everywhere
revere.  Of course, the revered part is not so much the bill of
particulars as the brilliant encapsulation of the philosophy of men such
as John Locke.  (...that to secure these rights, governments are
instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed; that when any government becomes destructive of these
ends...  I don't have the text in front of me, but you get the idea)

But the parts quoted are polemics, not philosophy.

> Just in case you aren't aware of it, a lot of people over here didn't think
> the system was working well at all
*for the American colonies*
> 216 years ago. We wrote down some of
> our complaints against your leader, in another great document titled the
> Declaration of Independence. A direct quote:
>
>       The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of
>       repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the
>       establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this,
>       let facts be submitted to a candid world.
>
...
>       He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with
>       manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
Etc. etc.  It is, as you say, great stuff even if the preamble has more
enduring value.  Now...  What are the legal *rights* of Territories and
possessions of the USA with respect to legislative and judicial
self-government?  Does our Constitution give them much more protection
than the English one gave these territories in 1776?  So what does 1776
have to do with it anyway?

Does anyone from South Carolina read this group?  I have the impression
that less than 216 years ago, more like 131, lots of guys thought the
government in Washington was seriously oppressive.  Does that invalidate
the Constitution?  Or does the fact that the North won, whereas the
English lost, prove which constitution was right?

(Of course, I think the winners were right in both cases, but not
because they won.)
>
> It's easy for a legislature to change laws. It's MUCH harder to change our
> written Constitution.
Yes; this conservative document is an extraordinary invention.  It's
nearly impossible to preserve any liberties for 200 years in any other
way.  Nearly.

> Our system is safer because it has more "checks and
> balances". In order to take away a fundamental right (without passing a
> Constitutional amendment), first the Congress would have to pass an
> unconstitutional law, and then the President would have to sign the law,
> and then the Supreme Court would have to uphold the law.

Can we hear from any Japanese Americans on this one?  Many people,
including adults born in the United States, were deprived of liberty and
property without due process of law--without a law being passed, as a
matter of fact--and the Supremes were too patriotic to go making trouble
in a national emergency.  I would say that in certain important regards
our own system wasn't working worth shit a mere 50 years ago.

It would be impertinent to ask African Americans how well the
Constitution has worked for them over the last 200+ years.


I hold these truths to be self-evident to any flaming liberal:

Different systems can achieve equally good ends, even if outsiders can't
understand how it happens.

Systems that work shouldn't be changed for light and transient reasons,
on either side of the ocean.

My great-great-great-great grandfather, taking potshots at redcoats
outside of Concord, was doing the right thing, because

Great powers habitually make asses of themselves and a mockery of their
high principles.  Some of them can be brought back to their senses.

If abuses make a system invalid, then every system is loathesome.  So
why bash each other?

--
Dan Drake                 In software, the *complete* design *is* the software!
[e-mail]        --Hugh Lamaster