Liberty Means Freedom for All

“(Reagan) demanded that Gorbachev ‘tear down’ the Berlin Wall―and the Soviets had no choice but to comply!”
I smiled, and said with pretended casualness, “If they had ‘no choice but to comply,’ why didn’t they tear it down in 1987, when Reagan made that ‘demand’? Or at least tear it down while Reagan was still in office? Why wasn’t it until late 1989 that the Berlin Wall came down?” He didn’t reply immediately, so I continued, “And if ‘Peace Through Strength’ was supposedly so effective, why didn’t the Soviet Union itself collapse until 1991 and 1992, long after Reagan had left office, and been replaced by George H.W. Bush―who was Mr. ‘New World Order’ and ‘United Nations coalition forces’ himself! Doesn’t that suggest that Reagan’s tough-talking, Star Wars-brandishing military buildup policy was actually less effective than the first President Bush’s more ‘inclusive’ and international policy was?”
-
“Reagan was a complete travesty!” he said coldly. “Except for his first year, 1981, when he signed the great Kemp-Roth tax cut bill, and his last year, 1988―which was an election year―Reagan raised taxes every single year he was in office! In fact, the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, or TEFRA, was the then-largest peacetime tax increase in American history: $227 billion over five years! He dramatically increased corporate taxes, and closed many so-called ‘loopholes’; he bailed out Social Security, by large increases in payroll tax withholding; and he didn’t even have the minimal integrity to admit that these were in fact tax increases―instead, he called them ‘gas fees,’ or some such nonsense, to cover up his lies. He twisted Republicans’ arms in Congress to increase the debt limit, and then he increased the federal deficit by massive amounts each year—from $2.3 trillion when he took office, to $4.7 trillion when he left office! And contrary to his repeated promises to shrink the federal payroll, it rose every single year he was in office! Even his supporters have to admit that, at best, he did nothing more than slightly slow down the rate of growth of the federal government. So instead of using the scalpel that he’d promised the American people he would apply to the federal government, all he did was talk Congress into inflating the balloon that was the federal government a tiny bit slower!”
-
“Most people still have the image of ‘Old MacDonald’s Farm’ as being where food animals are raised; they imagine the animals wandering about freely in the fields, grazing on grass, and going ‘Moo, moo!’ and ‘Oink, Oink!’ all day, but that’s a complete myth! The production of animals for slaughter these days has been completely mechanized, just like any other modern ‘factory’! It is the most sickeningly brutal process imaginable!”
-
“Fish are intelligent, and I think most likely they can feel pain―and yes, I know that their brains don’t have a neocortex, and they have fewer C fibres to transmit pain,” she said, coming over to the aquarium. She picked up a small net from the aquarium stand, held it out before my eyes, and said, “Fish aren’t just swimming vegetables, you know; if I were to net one of my fish, and take it out of the tank, what would be its reaction? Don’t you think that it would desperately struggle for its life, and frantically try to get back into the water?”
-
“I think we all need to seriously ask ourselves, ‘Can animals truly suffer?’ In other words, are their brains advanced enough to really experience conscious suffering, like we do? It seems to me that language experiments with chimpanzees, gorillas, and dolphins have clearly shown that even the ‘highest’ animals aren’t capable of a true ‘language’―it’s simply beyond their capacity, even though researchers like John Lilly tried very hard to communicate with dolphins. Yes, chimpanzees have a higher degree of awareness than, say, a dog has; and a dog has a higher degree than a fly has. There’s a continuum in nature, containing many different levels of mental functioning; but in the end, I think we have to acknowledge that we are clearly alone at the top of the pyramid! That’s why there is no ‘moral choice’ involved when a lion kills a gazelle; the lion is acting purely by instinct, and isn’t capable of ‘morality.’ Similarly, there’s no reason to think that a deer shot by a hunter, or a cow in a factory farm, knows that it will be killed; whereas a human inmate sitting on Death Row does understand, and can feel…”
Sophie said angrily, “Of course they know it! Why do you think cows thrash about so desperately, once they’ve been hung up on the conveyor to be killed? Why does a wounded deer try so frantically to get away from the drunken hunter who shot him?”
-
I looked him directly in the eye, and said soberly, “You and most Truthers believe that President Bush and his cohorts either actively participated in―or at least was knowingly complicit, and a passive participant in―a conspiracy that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11, injured thousands of others, and devastated thousands of families; and they did it to get us involved in an Iraq War that has cost us almost 4,500 soldiers’ lives in addition to 32,000 wounded, with a financial cost of $2 to $3 trillion dollars.” I shook my head, and added solemnly, “That would make Bush and his fellow conspirators mass murderers and criminals on an absolutely staggering scale! I personally despised Bush as a President, and I don’t think he was ever legitimately elected to office―but that doesn’t mean I could ever think that even he was capable of ordering a 9/11 ‘inside job’! Bush might have been ignorant at times, he might have been taking too many vacations in Texas so that he didn’t carefully read his intelligence reports, but he certainly wasn’t monstrously evil, as you Truthers suggest!”
-
He shrugged, and then added, “Scientific genetic selection is going to come for human beings very soon; there’s absolutely no doubt about it. We’re already performing ‘Germinal Choice’ reprogenetic screening, to try and eliminate the instantiation of children with genetic disorders such as Down Syndrome. Hopefully this kind of genetic selection will become commonly available within my lifetime; but if not, it will definitely be available within Dunge’s and your own lifetimes.” His voice was filled with enthusiasm, as he said, “Just think of it: you’ll be able to go in and pick out the precise genetic specifications for your children: race, gender, hair and eye color, body type, height―everything! There will be no more children born with cleft palates, or crossed eyes; every woman will potentially be beautiful, and every man potentially handsome.”
“If every woman looked like Beyoncé, and every man looked like Johnny Depp, the concept of ‘beautiful’ and ‘handsome’ wouldn’t have meaning any longer!” I argued. “Just like the concept of ‘intelligence’ wouldn’t mean anything, if everyone had exactly the same neural software implanted into us at birth.”
-
“And that’s why I don’t think a computer will ever be conscious.