I find this debate fascinating.
I recall an American I know posting a quote on another Board (attributed to a famous American) paraphrased as “The value of a country can be determined by the number of people wanting in versus the number of people wanting out”.
I thought that point was valid.
By that standard, the United States is great country. (By many other standards as well)
So is Canada
As a Canadian, I am proud of the fact that we have Universal Health Care, that we allow marriage of gay couples, that we allow stem cell research and that almost all forms of firearm ownership are illegal.
I think we are a great country (in part) because of those policies, not in spite of them.
All of these policies have come about in the last fifty years or so and we have not degenerated into a Totalitarian Regime.
Our experiences with universal health care have been very positive overall. The problem that is starting to arise is that the costs of health care is growing exponentially with new technologies becoming available. we are now debating the wisdom of a new model which is a private/public mixture.
As far as I know, the US is the only industrialized country that does not have universal health care. Can all of the rest of us be so wrong?
I think with all the models available from all the different countries that have universal health care, you guys should be able to pick and choose which policies work well and which not so well and tailor your health care to your own county’s particular needs.
My point is that a great society is created by a balance between Socialist values and Capitalist values. Too much of each leads to extremism.
Let the pendulum swing a little, it’s not so bad.
Before I get labeled as a “long haired hippie type Pinko fag”, I am a pretty average Canadian.
I have a good paying job, wife, two kids and a house in the suburbs - a lot like your average American??
I do have right wing leanings to go along with my left though.
I think I pay WAY too much in taxes, I think our immigration policy is too lax and I think we are way too easy on criminals.
But see - my left pretty much balances out my right so I just chug along as a reasonably happy well balanced guy.
One big problem here in the U.S. is that, dating back to at least the Vietnam War demonstrations, anger, insults and attempts at intimidation have been the weapons chosen to acheive social change (though signs and reverberations of these types of attitudes can be found going back to the turn of the twentieth century). Naturally this approach has caused much resentment and a backlash in kind, and now we have a situation in this country where each side (or at least the impassioned movers and shakers who make things happen) pretty fairly hate each other, and along with this hate comes a massive distrust. Each side suspects the motives of the other and so each side has dug in, refusing to give an inch.
As to what the solution is – realistically speaking – I have no idea. I’ve been surprised to see that there are certain people on both sides who would really like to see the country split in two, with each side having its own country. (I have to admit that I’ve entertained such fantasies myself. :D) But such a solution is wholly unworkable, if for no other reason than that people of differing ideologies are often married to, or the parents or siblings of, each other. Division of resources would be another huge sticking point.
Another problem is that here in this country we don’t (and can’t) pick and choose things from other countries that work well and then determine how to integrate them into our own particular set of societal circumstances. No, we largely have laws and policy foist upon us by presidents that approximately fifty percent of the nation disagrees with most of the time, and by a Congress that almost everyone thinks very poorly of (their own particular congressman notwithstanding, that is). These people decide amongst themselves what we’ll get and how we’ll get it, and neither we nor what is going on in other countries has more than a nominal influence on what we eventually wind up with.
Anyway, again, yours was a nice post. If more people in this country (and admittedly I’m one this would apply to, as well) had the same types of attitudes and comported themselves in the way that you and Maastricht do, things would go a great deal better.
Psst. Look up. I quoted a version of the whole ‘anger, insults, and attempts at intimidation’ thing dating back to 1884. You can actually go back a lot further than that.
I’m sure it has always existed to some degree, but IMO it didn’t bleed over and become characteristic of generalized public discourse until the sixties.
Your opinion is incorrect. It has always been a characteristic of generalized public discourse.
One of my favorite examples:
These days the dumping of feces is largely metaphorical but what’s happened in the post-war era is an increased volume of information (and disinformation!) via television and, much later, the internet, which has fed the fire, and likewise an increased coverage of that discourse which serves to create a feedback loop.
There was substantial opposition to the US joining both World Wars, but Vietnam was the first time the protests were televised. If you want the major catalyst for bad behavior, don’t blame the liberals, blame mass media.
If you want, we could talk about the Draft Riots in NYC in the 1860s instead. They fired cannister shot down sixth avenue. You could still see the scars on the buildings till the mid-1980s.
Yeah, we could talk about sporadic instances of protest and violence going back all the way to the beginning of recorded history, and it would mean nothing. I’m talking about the way the left as a whole has adopted insults, anger and intimidation as their preferred method of achieving social change. This type of behavior has characterized liberal promotion of every liberal cause starting with the late sixties. It was characteristic of the anti-war movement, the cultural revolution, women’s rights, civil rights (a movement which, interestingly enough, was quite civil and honorable until white liberals jumped on the bandwagon), homosexual rights, etc., etc., etc. This type of behavior by entire political ideologies was virtually unheard of in this country throughout at least the twentieth century up to the late sixties. Even people around here freely own up to it and justify their tactics by claiming that civility is too slow.
People around here often bemoan the fact that shows like William F. Buckley’s program Firing Line, where intelligent people of differing ideologies discuss the issues of the day calmly and rationally, can no longer be found. The reason for that is that the cultural standards of today, which have been shaped and fashioned by the left, do not allow for civilized discussion of the issues. No, when it comes to the left, it’s “our way or you’re an evil asshole!” And now the right is finally beginning to fight fire with fire – which is regrettable but really the only option to keep from being steamrolled by the tactics of the left – and so here we are now where everything is polarized and everyone hates each other and everyone mistrusts each other and everyone acts like entitled assholes who don’t have to moderate their behavior for anyone.
I’ve often thought to myself that if a time machine existed and someone from JFK’s day could be suddenly brought into today’s country, they would absolutely not be able to believe that things could get so fucked up in such a short amount of time. But they have, and the chickens that are coming home to roost now in the form of a divided country in which everyone hates and mistrusts the other side, are the direct result of the tactics deliberately embraced by the left in its arrogance that its way was the only proper way, and in its eagerness to impose that way upon everyone else.
I’m sure you don’t like admitting blame for all this. I wouldn’t either. But dredging up a handful of isolated instances of political unrest over the last umpteen centuries hardly lets you off the hook for the forty years of nonstop attack dog behavior that has brought things in this country to the sorry state they are in today.
I asked the question today in General Questions.
I would like to know whose date we are using. Some countries will be in 12/21/12 before we will,does that mean some of the world will end before another?
Didn’t some one say,“oh what fools these mortals be”?
Yesterday I listened to the President’s speech. At one point he said that his health care reform would not raise taxes on the middle class. This morning the regional news read an email from a viewer who said, paraphrasing, ‘It looks like Obama is going to tax the middle class into poverty.’
Now, it’s debatable whether the President’s plan can be funded by increasing efficiency, using money that is wasted elsewhere in the budget, taxing insurance companies, increasing the number of people by tens of millions who are paying into insurance plans, and rescinding Bush’s tax cuts on the wealthy. But never has the President said that he would increase taxes on the middle class. Not during the campaign, nor since he’s been in office. He has specifically said that UHC would not increase taxes on the middle class. But conservatives live in some bizarro world where ‘not’ means ‘will’.
Actually, the writer said, ‘It looks like he’s going to tax all of us hardworking middls class people to death, to pay for every bum who’s never had a job in their lives. – Frank’
This is, of course, the problem with comparing different countries’ policies. Except that of course many people grow up under one system & seek to form another; that’s how reform happens. Ergo, the former Soviet Union is no longer Leninist, & the USA decided to keep Social Security.
Maybe we could find some people who’ve dealt with health care both in the USA & in Europe, & they could compare their experiences in both countries!
Funny, looks like the Dem leadership is trying to provide adequate care to those who aren’t covered while still allowing the vast majority to enjoy the superior care they have now.Which you just recommended. If it works, we might stick with that instead of going to single-payer.
What now? Certainly not the mainstream Washington left. Those guys are so nice they make me vomit.
Wrong. The talk radio culture is & has been more or less right wing (if not fully in the conservative movement) since the late 1980’s. And Buckley’s National Review declared Rush Limbaugh the “Leader of the Opposition” in 1993 or thereabouts.
Not if they remembered Father Coughlin or Joe McCarthy.
And this sentence here sounds suspiciously like anti-FDR prose.
Sorry, the right owns the culture of demonization, intimidation, & culture war. You’re ignoring great swaths of history for your own purposes.
There have been leftist movements that embraced violence for well over a hundred years, but post-McGovern, the establishment left has been ridiculously nice & conciliatory. In fact, this is probably why they lose elections; they lack an interest in the fire that young men (among others) tend to demand.
