[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Scott Ellis) wrote on 13.11.97 in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> "Because it is that way now" is NOT necessarily a valid argument for > keeping things the same way. Slavery used to be common, East Germany used > to exist. That is not a valid arguement for the continuance of East > Germany and slavery. Actually, in both cases, it _was_ a valid argument. Not a particularly good one in the slavery case, of course, but that's because the arguments for the other side were so incredibly stronger. In the East Germany case, it's far from clear that the opposite arguments were actually stronger. There are (IMHO reasonable) people who think both parts would have been better off today if the unification had been at least postponed, and the example of Austria surely argues that having more than one part in Germany isn't such a bad thing per se. Note I'm not saying the unification is bad, either - I'm just saying this is far from being as clear-cut as you seem to think. (Or are you maybe confusing East Germany with the particular political system it had for the most time? That one was already gone some time before the unification.) Similarly, "it's been that way" is a valid argument wrt bash. Changing this means work for a lot of people. Avoiding that work *is* a valid argument. It may or may not be good enough, but there can be no reasonable doubt that it is valid. Change is not valuable per se. MfG Kai
