Desrtopa comments on When None Dare Urge Restraint - Less Wrong

41 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 December 2007 11:09PM

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Comment author: Desrtopa 08 July 2011 06:25:19AM 3 points [-]

Initially, there were smarter responses to 9/11 than I had guessed. I saw a Congressperson - I forget who - say in front of the cameras, "We have forgotten that the first purpose of government is not the economy, it is not health care, it is defending the country from attack." That widened my eyes, that a politician could say something that wasn't an applause light. The emotional shock must have been very great for a Congressperson to say something that... real.

This may have been more of an applause light than you thought. This is an outlook I've heard expressed quite frequently by conservatives of a more libertarian bent, and the fact that congresspeople don't say such things more often is most likely because they're not offered many contexts in which it's an appropriate way to endear themselves to their constituents.