Dear Jim:
Thanks for the invitation to participate in your new group. I look forward to
reading the postings to your new web page.
As the moderator, you should be informed of my anti-political bias. I
condemn politics as a anti-social throw-back to Platonic collectivism.
Accordingly, I am a conscientious abstainer from political participation, which
I consider the means of conquest of the individual by the state. I do not
knowingly identify with or engage in party or interest group politics and am
leery of all public policy initiatives no matter how scholarly or scientific.
However, I do appreciate the sentiments expressed in your welcoming message. I
welcome all movements that improve the practice and expand the range of
self-government even though some may become corrupted by politics.
I would consider myself a "conservative" only if was generally
understood that the word referred to the preservation and cultivation of the
classical liberalism of Spinoza, Locke, Mandeville, Smith, Ferguson, Bastiat,
Spencer, the Austrian laissez faire economists and various American
individualists who were never so identified in public. A more specific reason I
am not a conservative is that I welcome social change provided it is the kind
brought on by voluntary interactions in a free-market environment. My only
concern with the pace of such change is that my limited learning capacity does
not put me at a disadvantage with respect to fast learners of new technology. I
believe that what I or others may want regarding the rate of social change is
irrelevant and that the best we can do is to grow with the times. Therefore, I
regard political intervention to forcefully alter the course of natural social
evolution or to prevent social change (maintain the status quo) an imperial
usurpation that will become destructive of the society that is to be protected.
Sincerely,
Alvin Lowi 26 Feb 2002
This letter was a response to the opening of www.iConservatives.org.uk
