Comment on Is Politics the Mindkiller? An Inconclusive Test

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 18:05:25 GMT

That analogy conflates two things: The fact that the man doesn't know why the fence is there, and the fact that he doesn't care. If I were the mayor, I'd dismiss his request simply because he hadn't done his research. This is not analogous to tearing down laws or social norms so old and complicated that no one could reasonably be expected to know why they were made in the first place. Maybe laws against homosexuality made sense once upon a time, or maybe they were always a bad idea. But I don't need to know that in order to establish that homosexuality should be allowed and accepted today. If there really were a fence, with no record of who built it or why, that just seemed to be inconveniencing everyone, we really would be justified in tearing it down. Sometimes 2 + 2 is just 4.

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