(This may be a better GD; feel free to move if so.)
The Daily Kos, a liberal blog, has a story about the former “right hand man” of conservative blog RedState’s founder who has a failing liver and no insurance. He (the founder) is asking for donations for said former right hand man to help his two daughters (not medical bills).
So the comment section at the Daily Kos has become a tangle of various debates and issues, such as:
Why should I donate to someone who’s actively worked against people in his exact situation? Why shouldn’t I spend it on general charities and other political causes to undo the damage I think he’s done?
What makes him more worthy than thousands of other people in his situation?
Would it be worth donating if it changes his mind? Does it matter if it doesn’t?
Would it prove the point of his political side that “oh, charity can just solve all these problems” if I did donate? Should it matter if it did?
What about donating out of basic compassion? (With some responding “see point #2 above”.)
But his daughters don’t necessarily have any connection to their dad’s political views? Why should they suffer for his crimes? (With some responding “see point #2 above”.)
Liberals advocate health care for everyone, not just those who agree with us. So how about some consistency here? Who am I to judge that his family deserves to go rot because of his views?
Screw him. This is his bed; let him lie on it. (A popular view, as you’d guess.)
Interesting. My gut response is to help him. Because he’s a person. I think all people should have access to help when they need it. It sounds like he really needs it.
I don’t necessarily think a person should not help him because he is conservative, but I also don’t see why his case is worth donating to given there are thousands of people in worse situations. He isn’t any more deserving of scorn than he is help.
That said, if you beg for money, people get to impose their own standards on whether you are deserving.
Lastly, any middle class person with kids should have life insurance and savings of some kind that will mitigate the problems in a situation like this. It’s really kinda inexcusable for his guy to be in this position barring extremely mitigating circumstances.
I donate on a regular basis, so I feel no moral obligation to donate to this guy. Let the charitable organizations out there decide if he’s worthy. If he dies, I feel sorry for his poor daughters. But on the bright side, maybe they’ll walk away from this with an understanding of why affordable health care is a GOOD thing. Where as otherwise, they probably would have been polluted with their father’s ideas and continued the cycle on down the line. Silver linings and all that.
Anyway, he’s got people praying for him. I’m sure that’s helpful.
I’m not a fan of group bashing (ie I’m not going to donate and neither should you!) but I personally would not donate to this guy. I’d just keep quiet about it.
There’s no reason to be rude and callous and yell about this guy who is sick. That’s just not cool.
Neither is rallying against improvements in health care, but oh well.
I feel the same way about this that I do about organ donation. If your opposed to being a donor, then you shouldn’t reap the benefits of others being donors. If you actively work against healthcare reform, then you shouldn’t reap the generosity of those who do and are charitable about it. However, I would help the daughters independently.
My gut response is that I won’t advocate on his behalf, but that I think people who do help him are doing a good thing.
I should be gleeful in a schadenfreude way, but I’m not. I’m sad and sorrowful that anyone would end up in such a position, and my politics are not to give only to those whose causes I like. I want everyone to have health care, even nasty, vicious people who make life more difficult for others. Just as my politics are that even horrible, disgusting people shouldn’t get the death penalty and even ghastly, wretched people should be allowed to vote.
My personal money won’t go to him, just as my personal money doesn’t go to liberals and good guys in the same position (I just don’t contribute to this sort of fund raiser). But if an organization I gave to gave to him, I’d be okay with that.
I expect that the amount of money this guy needs would save a lot more lives if used to combat malaria or some such in Africa. Why should I care about this one guy more than I care about a bunch of Africans?
I think it would be better to send him a letter informing him that I gave my donation to him to Obamacare so that this wouldn’t happen to others in the future.
Anyone who’s actively worked to prevent others from getting health care is scum. The only reason why people are even talking about donating to him is because his scumminess made him famous. There are loads of more deserving people than him and to reward him essentially because he is famous is wrong. Sorry to his daughters, but I’ll save someone else’s daughters if I can get people to support Obamacare
Well, I’d say they are scummy people. Still people.
You know, if we won universal coverage, scummy people would be covered. We wouldn’t be doing any sort of ethics test or a hypocrisy eval before giving them care. So, I don’t want to make agreeing with me a condition of getting help.
But I completely understand why you want to prioritize with your own limited money.
My first inclination is “regardless of this guys situation, family, or political views, it’s a bad idea to change policy based on a single person’s situation”.
My next inclination is “If I’m going to donate money, I should donate it to the cause that will help the most people (modulo if they are directly related to me), and donating to a single person doesn’t seem like it would do that”
My last inclination is “This feeling of schadenfreude is delicious and I feel bad for having it at some guy’s expense”
I actually don’t think people who help him are necessarily doing a good thing in an absolute sense. Yes, the money will do good in that it will help him, but it will draw resources from more effective programs, slow the momentum of any lasting comprehensive health care reform, prop up multiple broken systems, and reinforce the notion that certain people are more deserving of charity (among other negatives). This is just like giving money to homeless people or bailing out companies who take excessive risks. There are rare occasions when it makes sense to do it, but most of the time, you are making things worse.
Things are playing out exactly the way he wanted, man with no insurance gets sick, his family is fucked. He may have thought differently when it was anonymous losers who got fucked over, I suppose. I’m not going to feel bad about him living with the healthcare and social safety net he advocated.
I hope he recovers and realizes exactly how fucked non-famous people would be in the exact same situation that he actively campaigned to help maintain, and instead starts campaigning for universal coverage.
I wouldn’t donate, though. I have little enough money and plenty of causes to support.
In fairness, I can’t think of the last time I directly contributed to cover someone’s healthcare costs unless I knew that person, so I’m not shutting him out because of his beliefs. I do donate to other charities, just not individual “help Total Stranger with heartbreaking story pay for X medical thing” campaigns.