politics - Muggle and wizarding, modern and Renaissance

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

David Frankis wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/3472 :

<< "this person sports a beard, and therefore sets explosive
devices near laboratories where animal experiments take place" >>

I fantasize that the syllogism says: 
'this person sports a SCRUFFY beard'.

<< My own solution is to make handguns available to the population on
demand, and then these people would soon be put in their place. It
does Mr Blair credit that, in his adherence to Mr Bush's lead in
everything, he shows that he recognises this problem. >>

??? Blair wants to make firearms less restricted ???

Nora wrote in 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/3475 :

<< The blood ideology seems to be the dominant form of bigotry in the
series. It's the one given a giant past from founding on, and has
been shown in the actions of any number of characters (Voldie, Lucius
Malfoy, Sluggy, Fudge, the whole Ministry) to be the primary cancer
of wizarding society. >>

Mmmph. 

I think there are arguments to be made for corruption or anarchism
being its primary cancer, or that the corruption results from the
anarchism. 

Anarchism: Some poster somewhere posted that the wizard folk are
obsessed with power, especially magical power, to the point of not
caring what the power is used for. I would say 'respectful' rather
than 'obsessed', and would say 'tolerant of different values' rather
than 'not caring', but the result is a general social tolerance of
some people are KNOWN to use Dark Magic, to buy cheap by threatening
to curse the seller and sell dear by deluding the buyer, to get
regulations passed in their favor by bribing Ministry officials, etc. 

Some individuals (like Weasleys and Potters) are very condemnatory of
such behavior and can even be said to be on the Light Side (even tho'
we've SEEN Arthur do a bit of corruption, getting his friends off from
punishment and acquiring those Top Box tickets) but the dislike
between Dark Side and Light Side is like the Muggle dislike between
'conservatives' and 'liberals' as displayed in the recent posts about
Fair Isle sweaters.

This makes the wizarding world a very fun place to read about and
fantasize about, but not such a fun place to live (at least for those
with lesser amounts of power). Somehow that reminds me of once at a
party, years ago, I started raving about Renaissance Florence,
something about philosophy being rediscovered and people getting
drunks on words with it, and the art, and science beginning to be
re-invented, and being a Republic led to a whole new kind of political
scheming, and love affairs, and there were constant duels to the
death, and assassinations, and the Black Plague every summer, and it
was a FABULOUS place to live if you thought you were immortal, and Lee
said: "In other words, if you were a teenager."