An addendum to my last post

It's been a few days, and I've been busy, but I wanted to add a quick little blurb regarding my last post.


I was watching the news the day after I posted about the contraception uproar, and I heard an interview with someone high up in the Catholic Church. I can't remember who it was, or even his specific office, but it was someone on the order of a Bishop or some such.


In any event, he was talking about how the problem is that the federal government is trying to make Catholic affiliated organizations pay for something the Catholic Church finds abhorrent.


News flash: The majority of tax-paying Americans find something that the government spends money on abhorrent. I find bailouts, extensive social welfare and the very tax code itself abhorrent. I suppose that I should found a church that holds these same ideas sacred and doctrinal, and try to make this a First Amendment issue so that my congregants don't have to pay for things they find abhorrent.


The truth of the matter though, is that I wouldn't do something like that, because I believe in social contract theory. In a nutshell, the theory of the social contract says that you surrender some of your freedoms to society so that you may reap the benefits of living in that society. Like all things, this is a pretty good idea in moderation, and a system that I am willing to buy into, as long as the sacrifices aren't too great or the rewards too chintzy.


As such, I will pay my taxes, disapprove of some of the things that they're spent on, and deal with it, and would advise others to consider what Hobbes (as in Thomas, not Calvin &) had to say about life without society. He warns that life is, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,"in the absence of a social contract. It's a tough pill to swallow, but sometimes you have to do and pay for things you don't really approve of because the alternative is a little too disconcerting.