The real issue at hand in the Limbaugh/Fluke controversy

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by gimpy117

And that pretty much shoots the free market in the foot.

They want it both ways. They scream about "free market! free market! let the market decide!" but then anytime the issue of revoking the antitrust exemption for insurance companies (McCarran-Ferguson Act) is brought up, all of a sudden it's "Whoooooaaaa, not that free of a market!" The insurance companies in this country are absolute slimeballs and one of the worst examples of regulatory capture.

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

If you look at your statement - you will see why you don't understand the objection. Your coming at this with the predetermined view that some entitlement spending by government is absolutely a necessity.

It is, and that's the prevailing view in Washington as well.

But for many conservatives, the welfare system is broken beyond repair.

Then you're getting into a completely different argument altogether.

Take a moment to step outside of your normal view and play devils advocate for a moment. Pretend that you see entitlements - all of them (Social security being a partial caveat) as entirely NOT the job of government. Medicaid, TANF & SNAP (welfare and foodstamps), Section 8 (subsidized housing), etc - look at it from the perspective of "none of these are the job of the government". If you do that - then the entire equation changes.

Ok, I'll go with you on your tangent. The social safety net was enacted because the world we lived in without it was brutal and cruel. Some have the attitude of "oh the government's gone wrong, it's made all these mistakes getting into the health insurance and food stamp business. etc etc." as if there was no good reason for the programs to be enacted in the first place. The days of debtor prisons and the elderly's only choice, as a rule, was having to live in squalor or with relatives are too far gone for anyone alive today to remember. Maybe that's why there's these pushbacks against the programs that eliminated these things. Do we really want to go back to the days of child labor? Do we want to go back to people dying in the streets or in sanitariums? Would it be an improvement to tell the elderly "welp, you've used up your usefulness and you can't work anymore, so unless you've saved and had good luck with your investments, piss off!" I don't think that's a world I'd like to go back to.

Now - lets be realistic. These programs cannot be just "killed" outright - but when a conservative sees how much the government has already gotten into things they feel it shouldn't - and then it wants to add MORE fingers to the pie, for whatever reason - they scream and yell and kick and raise a fuss. Why? Because its all going the WRONG way - we should be looking at putting more responsibility on citizenry for their own welfare - not increasing the role of government in their lives.

Soooo, social Darwinism? No thanks. As I said before, that's a brutal way of life.

As conservatives - we hear all the time that new program A is "for the children", and new program B is "for the elderly" and new program C is "for the poor" or "for the GLTB folks" or some other nonsense - and that if we oppose more government gimme's we are somehow heartless and meanspirited.

Telling the disadvantaged that they just have to suck it up and tough poop for your disadvantage is pretty heartless and mean spirited. ""Any society, any nation, is judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members ; the last, the least, the littlest." - Cardinal Mahoney or Ghandi or a million other sources. Still a good quote though. And if you don't care for that one, there's always "Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me." - Jesus.