Blacklisting? Don’t make me laugh. Ask someone in human resources what kinds of negative information they are allowed to give out about an ex employee…pretty much nothing. And as far as economic reasons go…individual employers are supposed to be responsible for the overall job market now?
Since when do people suffer and die due to loss of employment in this country? And humliation is not exactly the kind of thing I think the goverment ought to be in the business of legislating against.
People are oppressed because they have to work for a living?
Ooooookay…let me rephrase…“As long as you can walk out the door and sell your skills elsewhere, your situation is in no way akin to slavery.”
Exactly my point. Forbidden by whom ? The government, naturally; otherwise they’d cheerfully share or sell everything down to your shoe size.
Loss of medical care, as said. Making companies responsibile for medically insuring their employees is nearly the moral equivalent of giving them legal permission to assault or murder their employees. While slapping a huge tax on the company at the same time, so it’s a two-fer.
There isn’t a single person in this country who will be denied health care. If something happens, just call 911 or go straight to the emergency room. The have to treat everyone until they are stable and any person can repeat the process as much as they feel like. This can cause economic hardship of course but that is mainly a problem for the middle class who have some money to take and not the poor.
I am not saying this system is ideal but you equated it to assault or murder which is horseshit. Companies don’t have anything to do with the problem just because they offer group health to some employees. That is a bonus, not an obligation they took upon themselves and there are other channels.
There are many more options for crucial health care than people like you care to admit. Poor people have teaching hospitals, charity hospitals, research programs, government programs, and pro bono physicians as options for things as serious as cancer to dialysis.
Have you ever actually met anyone that didn’t get treatment for cancer, kidney disease, or heart disease in the U.S.? I grew up in a very poor, rural area, and poor people didn’t have any problem getting treatment at the state teaching hospital as long as they had someone to drive them there.
The problem comes at the economic level when someone has a house and some assets but not enough. That is a completely different issue than you describe though.
I think that Benjamin Franklin rolls over in his grave every time someone says the words “free speech zone”, and whenever an aggressive little piggy opens fire on peaceful protesters, old King George is laughing from below.
No such problem exists here, AFAIK, although depending on which states are involved, you may be taking a serious legal risk by transporting the open bottle in your car. Which only proves your point, of course.
FTR, it is now illegal for at least one year to drink any alcohol whatsoever on any beach in the city of San Diego.
It hasn’t been that long that sodomy laws were deemed unconstitutional, and not that long since systematic religious and racial discrimination was the norm in much (to some extent, all) of the US. It also hasn’t been that long since my family was almost ruined by a chain reaction that started when one member got branded a “Communist” and practically everyone who tried to defend him (and then defend his defenders, etc.) lost their jobs (at least) as a result.
During WWI it was illegal to criticize the government or the President for any reason. I’m not aware of the specific penalty, though. And although it didn’t have any effect whatsoever on the freedoms of the American people, that whole “Liberty fries” thing at the Senate bugged the hell out of me, in that we were basically giving the middle finger to free Europe. Of course, the same thing happened in WWI as well, when hamburgers became “Liberty burgers” and frankfurters something else, although that was a different story.
Are you not familiar with the story of the Red Scare?
Which is highly frowned upon and, to a great extent, highly illegal here. Some guy named Jeffs is getting nailed for a series of offenses involving a polygamist cult in Utah as we speak. Under state law, BTW, and Utah is by far the most permissive of that sort of thing–which is to say, not that much. And if you don’t think there’s public outrage over polygamy here, try watching the Polygamy Horror Stories specials that the cable news networks over here trot out on a slow news week.
I think you have a pretty distorted view of what freedom of religion means in American society. I can’t blame you, since I’m sure it hasn’t been presented to you in an objective manner; of course, I can probably tell you very little about Dutch social policy, so it cuts both ways. But we have raids on religious sects that are, as you put it, “too cut off from the world”, as well. Membership in such religions is extremely stigmatized here, and not only do cable news networks routinely rile people up over it, a fair number of our police procedural shows on TV–fiction and nonfiction–use it as a recurring theme, disproportionate to its actual effect on our society. No religion can break the law, and polygamy is illegal here. It may well be practiced more in Utah than in most of Western Europe, but it isn’t any less stigmatized or prosecuted.
Here’s a little pop quiz for you. Market forces are the result of:
a. Flying pigs
b. Invisible strings
c. Laughing lagomorphs
d. Laughing leprechauns
e. Societal factors
Wanna hazard a guess?
OK, really, guys, is it that difficult to see that this is a social factor, which is analogous to the social factors mentioned about Korea? Nobody batted an eye when those were brought up as being important in the freedom of a country’s people, but somebody brings up American social factors and all of a sudden everyone’s Sam Adams. Is this as difficult a concept as you all are making it out to be, or am I the dense one?
BTW, Voyager, the movie is called “Good Luck and Good Night”.
Or not, as personally, if I was getting “blacklisted”, I would sue. Even when their ability to do such things wasn’t restricted, people still managed to get new jobs after they were fired or quit a job. Imagine that! It’s almost as if you were… wrong!
When you finally get tired of this place, I will miss your extreme black and white viewpoint. This line of yours doesn’t even really make sense… My job is responsible for providing insurance, therefore they have moral equivalent of permission to murder me? That sounds… I don’t know… delusional?
Where, in the United States, is this the case? And even if you can’t find a job right away there are a ton of state agencies out there, in every state, to make sure you don’t end up dead on the side of the road. My wife had an emergency apendectomy with no insurance… bills totalled about $250,000. Signed a few sheets of paper, and she paid $100. Which was broken up into 5 payments. The state ate the rest. Yes, I realize that that cost is passed on to tax payers, but really, that’s what a government is FOR.
So, what is the solution for the problem you think exists?
For day-to-day care, including prescription medication? No.
For mental health care, including prescription medication? No.
If you have (to pick a common ailment) high blood pressure a hospital can’t do much for you unless and until you have a heart attack.
If you have diabetes, a hospital can’t do much for you unless you get complications.
Most of the “health care” Americans need when it comes to these conditions is in the form of prescriptions and routine doctor visits. Daily care, not acute care.
Of course it is possible to physically go to Cuba, but you have to be clandestine about it as it IS illegal under US law (why do you think there are no flights directly from the US to Cuba).
Sorry, but restricting citizens movement does not make us very free.
I don’t know whether we’re allowed to post responses to the OP or if we’re supposed to be quibbling with each other over the Dixie Chicks, but here’s a different perspective.
One freedom that the founding fathers seem to have found quite important is the freedom from unjust criminal prosecution. Most of Europe at the time was using some variant of the Napoleonic code, which included a presumption of guilt in criminal prosecutions. The rights spelled out in the Bill of Rights were somewhat revolutionary at the time. Now, not to say that other justice systems are unfair, but I think it’s safe to say that the US criminal justice system is among the top in the world in terms of protection for the accused.
In many other countries, there is still a presumption of guilt. True, you’ve got to start with a presumption one way or the other, but a presumption of innocence (standard in the US), grants much greater protection to the accused.
In many other countries, including most European countries, there is an inquisitorial system instead of an adversarial system (standard in the US). The adversarial criminal justice system may be monumentally inefficient, but it leads to greater impartiality in deciding criminal cases, which, again favors the accused.
The focus on protecting the accused is, IMO, a focus on individual freedom. It comes at the cost of an abstract “societal freedom,” I suppose, in that more criminals go free to roam the streets. But, as was said upthread, we Americans tend to sacrifice the General Good in favor of the Individual Good, for better or for worse.
I’d also like to reiterate a point made upthread. In the days of yore, we were the Land of the Free. I think that now, we are a Land of the Free. We (Americans) certainly have more freedom than, say, the Chinese. But when you try to compare our “degree” of freedom to other civilized countries, you run into problems.
The destitute children and elderly living well below the poverty line may qualify for government assistance or charity, but the average working American is on her own when it comes to accessing medical care. As you point out, the uninsured and insured alike will likely lose their home if those medical bills go unpaid. I dare anyone to open their local phone book and find an oncologist willing to treat a person who can’t pay. I am confident it will be a difficult or impossible task.
There are fifty million Americans without health insurance and the number is climbing. The United States ranks 37 in the world for infant mortality. The US has the highest infant mortality rate in the developed world and higher than many developing countries.
People without health coverage usually don’t seek preventative care because they can’t pay for it. Cancer needs to be detected early for successful treatment. I suppose you can go to the emergency room, but I am pretty sure the ER doesn’t provide chemotherapy.
According to a USA Today report, 18,000 people die annually due to lack of health insurance. The head of a leading HMO asserted that the study was flawed and the number inaccurate. Clearly, any claimes from a large HMO should be considered bias. The HMO is a for profit business. Health care is a profit industry; doesn’t this fact alone work against patient care. Well, I guess it doesn’t if you are rich and can pay for it.
I’ve been reading this thread with some interest, my personal opinions falling on various sides of the fence.
Just this one comment though irked me, in the days of yore you were the land of the free? Really? Maybe if you had the right skin colour that was the case?
I’m not just throwing stones from my golden throne here, I easily acknowledge Australia’s record is hardly better with our aboriginal population, and the UK was neck deep in the African slave trade for a long time before banning it.
But it just irritates when hand on heart someone declares we were the most free nation in the world once upon a time.All hail the symbol of freedom, the Constitution. Only if you don’t include the native americans in that freedom, and oh of course, those slaves don’t count neither. And while yes, slavery was abolished early on, would you say African Americans had as much freedom as their white countrymen? Not until well into the 20th century they didn’t.
On an unrelated tangent to the above, but on topic for the thread as a whole, I think America “seems” to be a freer (is that even a word?) country because, as someone mentioned upthread, there is a stronger individualistic streak Americans seem to have, while Australia (and other commonwealth countries) for example, still value individual endeavour, but I think we still have a social focus on the groups greater good, which can generally only be accomplished through government intervention.
In an illustration, A recent federal budget had a $2 Billion (IIRC) surplus, and the government announced a package of tax cuts. Which of course had nothing to do with a looming federal election :dubious: A few polls were taken as to whether we’d rather a tax cut, or no tax cut and see the money spent on healthcare, education, and infrastructure. The polls were all fairly heavily weighted (IIRC around the 65% mark) towards no tax cuts and spend the money on services. Would I be correct in thinking you would get the opposite response in the States?
GreedySmurf - If you apply modern morality to any non-modern situation, you come up with outrageous results.
The freedom that the US founding fathers designed for its citizens was arguably greater than the freedom for the citizens of any other country. At the time, we defined “citizen” as white, male, landed, and let’s face it, Christian. But this was the standard moral code of the time.
Imagine if someone visited us from the year 2207, and was horrified that we forced our pets to eat off the floor and didn’t let them vote. Our current moral outlook holds this as normal. John Adams, circa 1780, would be just as confused by your outrage WRT minority rights, as you would be by the outrage of the 2207 time traveller.
(WARNING: Don’t take this analogy the wrong way - I’m not actually saying that minorities are morally equivalent to house pets!)
A lot of Americans who come to countries like the Dominican Republic often praise the ‘freedoms’ they enjoy here that they don’t have back home.
The freedom to be politically incorrect, the freedom to drive without a speed limit, no seatbelt, no motorbike helmet, swigging a beer… but then they’re the first to whine when they’re affected by the downside of these freedoms - like a non-functioning justice system that enables thieves and murderers to go unpunished.
People in countries like this also have the freedom to build their shanties wherever they like, without any pesky building regulations or planning permission - in ravines, riversides, flood plains - but are then the first to be swept away when it rains hard, as happened last week.
The difference between government coercion, which is backed by society’s sanction of violence, and all of the other ways humans are “coerced” is the central distinction.
Life is about being coerced. We have to eat. We have to avoid falling down when we walk. And I know that if I become smitten with a beautiful woman who won’t give me the time of day, then I am not truly free! BUt as humans we have to juggle all of the pushes and pulls and figure our way through them.
In fact, the only way to be free of these non-governmental coercions is to give up the freedom from government coercion that we have now.