On 10/27/06, Matt Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: (...)
Orwell's 1984 predicted a world where a totalitarian government watched your every move. What he failed to predict is that it would happen in a democracy. People want surveillence. You want cameras in businesses for better security. You use credit cards that track your spending because cash can be stolen. You let automated toll booths track your movements so you don't have to stop. You trust Yahoo/Google/your ISP/company/university with your email because it's convenient. You give up privacy a little bit at a time and each time you get something in return. Big changes happen slowly.
(...)
We are discussing semantics of politics here. Just because democracies tend to give more and more power to entities that they consider "good" and "responsible", they tend to destroy themselves and become totalitarian governments. Totalitarian governments on the other hand have a tendency to destroy themselves either by power abuse or dependency on a personality cult. For the record, it is not clear from the reading of "1984" that the Big Brother government reached power by force. Winston's childhood memories on this historical subject are blurred, and conceivably that totalitarian government could have ascended to power by a democratic way. ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
