[governance] Milton is wrong, Segragation is wrong

[Karl Auerbach]

On 09/05/2009 06:41 AM, Eric Dierker wrote:
> This is terribly wrong....

> Any man woman or child is fully entitled to bear hatred, bias and
> prejudice. They are not entitled as Milton suggests to act upon it.
> NCUC, Syracuse and Delft are not "free" and are certainly not free to
> discriminate and cloister and exclude.

I disagree with you and agree with Milton M.

People are, and people will remain, creatures with biases and prejudices.

And people will always aggregate and exclude on the basis of those 
biases and prejudices.  People will congregate with relatives, friends 
and like-thinkers.  Communities will form.  Nations will form. 
Religions will form.

There are specific acts that these communities, particularly national 
and religious communities, have come to place beyond the pale of acceptance.

People who do these acts, whether from bias and prejudice or not, are 
generally considered to have violated the law of the community and are 
to be punished.

Over the last 250 years the idea has developed that government and 
governance should be exercised without the taint of bias and prejudice 
that infects individuals.  In the US we tend to wrap that idea with the 
words "due process" and "equal protection".

There is also slowly developing the idea that in certain contexts, 
particularly one in which one has power and authority over another (such 
as in employment relationships), that people's ability to give 
differential treatment on the basis of sex, race, religion, and 
sometimes age and mental or physical state, is not to be allowed.

But as a general matter, individual people remain able to give vent to 
their prejudices either in words or in acts, as long as those do not 
cross the bounds that have been imposed.  That leaves a lot of space in 
which people may permissibly exercise their biases and prejudices.

In the context of establishing bodies of government or government 
statements of aspirations, such as you cite, are nice.  But as a 
practical matter they do not serve nearly as well as clearly articulated 
limitations on the power of those bodies of governance.  That's why in 
the US Constitution our first amendment is cast in terms of limits on 
the power of our Congress to enact laws that restrict speech - we don't 
say that "free speech" is a right, rather we say that the government's 
power to restrict is greatly limited.

		--karl--


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