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To: Rebelbase

More and more,

I see a neo-feudalistic system developing here in America.


10 posted on 07/20/2009 6:19:20 AM PDT by MrB (Go Galt now, save Bowman for later)
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To: MrB

Sorry, but you chose the wrong word. Feudal comes from the word for faith, trust, loyalty. It was a system of government based on honor and loyalty. It was a hell of a lot better than what followed it (royal absolutism and mercantilism). Free market capitalism is as good or as bad as the honesty and virtue of the people engaged in it. So too was feudalism—as good or as bad as the honesty and virtue of the people in charge. There were plenty of dishonest people in charge back then just as there were under the initial century or so of free market capitalism. We are now under bureaucratic state capitalism. It is bad because it almost automatically ensures that people abandon honor and virtue as they govern. Neither feudalism nor free market capitalism automatically ensure that.

Feudal is a real word. It has meaning. It ought not to be thrown around as a synonym for corruption. All systems of political organization are susceptible to corruption. Some are more susceptible than others. The feudal system, because the glue that held it together was honor, was not the worst of what history has seen. (The worst are systems held together by sheer, naked power.)


16 posted on 07/20/2009 6:26:19 AM PDT by Houghton M.
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