I agree. I’m socially liberally but generally I am fiscally conservative. I just happen to think that healthcare shouldn’t be an issue of wealth. For me it’s a responsibility we have as a nation to each other. It isn’t just about taking care of people who refuse to work, those people are already getting health cards on public assistance (don’t get me started on that program’s need for an overhaul). We’re talking about people who are working or want to work who can’t afford the sky high rates of private insurance.
Having people have access to doctors and health providers will, IMHO, help in the long run on via many aspects. Healthier people should equal less people calling off. If people can afford to go to the doctor when it’s a cough they might not end up in the emergency department with severe bronchitis. A lot of those emergency visits get written off and paid for by money from the state as many hospitals are partially funded by counties and states. The examples could go on and on…
Sleeps has already made the point, but pick any government program you support (let’s say the military here) and I could turn it back around on you. The money we pay for the military serves your belief about the country’s interests; it’s not some objective truth. Not that I’m stupid enough to think we don’t need a military; but the money we’ve spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, for instance, can’t be said to be unanimously accepted as necessary. But even when we’re not at war, the military budget could arguably be drastically cut with no adverse effect on our defense. I was in the Army, and I saw massive amounts of money wasted on a daily basis. There should definitely be more oversight to ensure our tax money is spent wisely with any huge government agency, but the fact that they try to get away with shit (just like private enterprises) doesn’t mean the agencies themselves don’t serve the country’s interests.
And Starving Artist, people who have spoken out against the war(s) or military spending (or in favor of the health care bill, for that matter, as we’ve seen this week) have been called a lot worse than “selfish” by conservatives.
SWB, that’s super that you think people should be able to get health care whether or not they can afford it. But that alone is not enough to justify a huge new government program that will affect a huge portion of the economy.
Again, you are getting too far afield from my first post, and you are not making any sense. I haven’t ever proposed to a liberal that the government have a military–that program already exists. And if I did propose that, and a liberal said what you say above, I would not call them selfish. I would say “super, so now you know how I feel when I say I don’t want my money spent on programs designed to re-distribute wealth.”
So you can’t “turn my post back around on me” or whatever. That doesn’t make any sense.
Oh, yes, yes it is. Because without it, people will suffer and die. Our people, more to the point, Americans. And just as we pay for a military to protect them from hordes of rampaging Canadians, plundering for our beer and our women, so do we also protect our people from needless suffering. Because they are our people. And if they are not, well, who’s people are they?
The free market, blessings and peace be upon it, has had its chance, and failed more or less miserably. Because it is motivated by profit, which noble motive can sometimes be warped into greed, which means people get sick and die because a spreadsheet says so.
Of course, we are loathe to violate the sanctity of private property, peace be upon it. Just as we are loathe to drag a young man off to the Army when he’d rather stay home with Mom.
But them’s the breaks. And also, because we say so. Because we went to the Boss and said, here’s our plan. And the Boss said, looks groovy, go for it!
Oh, OK, I never looked at it like that. Your excellent argument has convinced me.
So I guess you see no legitimate objections to the “tax lawyers don’t have to pay tax” bill, right? As long as it is passed by a duly-elected majority and signed by the president, you’d have no problem with that bill at all. If someone made the argument that the law is idiotic and not something the government should do, you’d say “hey, it was passed by a majority, so you can’t say that it isn’t something the government should do.”
Luci, charity is part of the private sector, so you caan save your misunderstanding of how the free market works for another thread. But you don’t like charity because it doesn’t have the power to force people to contribute.
Makes sense if you actually read what I was responding to (which you wrote, BTW). Which was calling somebody selfish because they supported something that served your beliefs about what the country’s best interests were, whether it be a “redistribution of wealth” (or whatever distortion you want to use to characterize the health care plan) or some defense program that’s been around for centuries.
And we were talking about whether or not conservatives or liberals are selfish with regard to demands for funding expansion of government, and not gay marriage. So we weren’t talking to you at all.
And we weren’t talking about war expenditures either. War is not a government social program.
What’s dishonest about it? The simple fact of the matter is that liberals want to expand government and conservatives don’t. Thus there is scant opportunity for conservatives to call liberals selfish in that regard to begin with, even if they were inclined to do so. But still the fact remains that historically whenever accusations of selfishness get hurled, it’s liberals who are making the assertion.
No, dear. This is a message board, one where people are free to respond to things other people post, whether directed toward them or not…you know, kind of like what DianaG did with my comment about liberals always wanting more government. In short, it’s in the nature of the board. Once you grow up a little and get some real world expericence you’ll be able to see that. In the meantime I will continue to trundle where I like, thank you very much.
Just saw this post. You and I have talked at great length about my theory of government, so you should already know that I don’t think the government should do something just because it would improve social welfare. Therefore, it doesn’t matter whether or not an improvement in social welfare can be objectively proven–that alone is not enough to justify government action.
Sure about that? Last I heard, a pretty sizable chunk of my *wealth *had been *redistributed *to pay for desert camouflage and whatnot. Returns have been disappointing, to say the least.
Yes, dick. I don’t care if you take my comment and respond with your stupid remarks. What I take exception to is you taking my comment and twisting it to frame a question that wasn’t asked. I was responding to the idea that Rand Rover presented. He said that someone asking him to pay for something he didn’t believe in was selfish so I used a different example and called him selfish right back. You wanted to make it into a LIBERALS LURVE BIG GUBMENT DURRRRRR and how nobody in the history of life itself could ever find an example of a conservative asking for a bigger government.
Also, your retarded “real world experience” bullshit is hilarious since it’s coming from some slack jawed moron who is stuck in the 50s.
No, actually the time I most approve of existed from the country’s inception to roughly 1969 - a period of close to 200 years. (This last in case, as a victim of today’s educational system, you don’t have a calculator handy.) You and your ilk are the ones who for some reason keep trying to define it as the fifties.
And yes, problems existed by then, but they were getting better decade by decade - as they had throughout the country’s existence - and problems of the scope and tragic consequence that we have now weren’t even on the horizon.
First of all, I was an adult by the time the counter-culture revolution happened.
And second of all, the counter-culture revolution actually happened.
(Or is it your opinion that things have just progressed smoothly and naturally and that no particular upheaval occurred somewhere around…oh, I don’t know…THE LATE SIXTIES!!?)
