Egalite, liberte, 401(k). Liberals have cashed out....

LA Times ^ | April 6, 2006 | Jonah Goldberg

[.cnI redruM]

THE FUNNY part of France's latest round of riots is what they're rioting about. These rabid rebels smashing their way through people and property alike, shouting revolutionary slogans and playing Robespierre in a FCUK hoodie are demanding … continued job security with paid vacations. Gone are the days of tearing down the system. Now is the time to burn a car for better dental benefits.

A similar, though for the time being less violent, transformation has taken place here in the United States. In the 1960s, the American leftists and liberals used to talk a big game about revolutionary change. "There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why?" Bobby Kennedy famously declared. "I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?" Kennedy borrowed the line from George Bernard Shaw, another titan of the left's desire to upset the applecart of history and start radical-fresh.

Howard Dean's scream notwithstanding, today's liberalism is a lot of slide-rule wonkery. The smartest and most passionate thinkers of American liberalism are more actuary than revolutionary.

[.cnI redruM]

In Assachussettes, the Left has totally won. "GOP" Governor Mitt Rommney has no choice but to sign a mandatory State Health Insurance Bill that passed the assembly 150 - 3. That's why the revolutionary thinking is over on the right. We are the ones who are oppressed and need to rebel.

[Tulane]

Romney isn't bad...why shouldn't the state require people to purchase insurance...I know I am tired of paying for some able-bodied person with a job that would rather spend $500 a month on a car/vacation/etc. than his own health insurance....

[ClearCase_guy]

More and more it becomes obvious that the so-called Progressive want to go back to the heyday of the Bolsheviks (1917) and the New Deal (1933).

Conservatives are the folks trying to pull the country into the 21st century.

[Unmarked Package]

This closing excerpt from the article sums up modern liberalism nicely. Unfortunately, it describes many politicians and voters calling themselves Republicans as well.

In 1955, William F. Buckley defined conservatism as "standing athwart history yelling, stop!" That was when history was said to be on the side of collectivism and the state. Now that the market seems to be driving history, the left is standing athwart it, occasionally burning a Peugeot or two, yelling, "Forget liberty, give me my perks."

[.cnI redruM]

Pretty much. So much of the world buys the solipsistic fallacy that they can somehow exempt themselves from the rules of economics and not hurt everyone else.

[Tribune7]

Under Murray's plan, all transfer payments would vanish, from Social Security and Medicare to corporate welfare and agricultural subsidies. In exchange, every low-income American over the age of 21 and not in jail would get $10,000 a year from the government. And everybody else would still get at least $5,000 a year from Uncle Sam. The only hitch is that people would be required to take out a minimal health insurance policy, and the tax code would stop favoring companies that offer health insurance.

Sounds good to me.

[.cnI redruM]

I've argued this before. People tell me. "Yeah, but these people won't know what to do with $10K and we need to tell them."

As if you could look at a typical public housing project and believe our government knows Jack about how these people should organize their lives...

[The Great RJ]

Murray's plan for giving everyone at least $5,000 a year ostensibly to buy health insurance has one flaw. Many of us baby boomers are virtually uninsurable. Common maladies and prexisting conditions like hypetension, sleep apnea, cancer surgery etc. make one a pariah for many individual insurance plans and only under continued group coverage can many of us be insured.

[cinives]

If the state didn't intervene in the first place to force hospitals to provide care regardless of payment ability, we wouldn't care if anyone had health insurance or not.

[cinives]

Except that the cost of health care and therefore insurance would decline if we with health insurance didn't also have to pay for the millions of deadbeats getting care for free.

[Tribune7]

"Yeah, but these people won't know what to do with $10K and we need to tell them."

They may not know what to do with it the first year, but they should have it pretty well figured out by year 2.

Good point about the housing projects.

[dynachrome]

"able-bodied person with a job that would rather spend $500 a month on a car/vacation/etc. than his own health insurance...."

What if they don't spend it anyway? Refuse treatment? how about ablebodied welfare parasites? How much will the new bureaucracy to enforce this mess cost? /rant off

[RightWingAtheist]

Yuppers. Conservatism isn't about holding on to the past; it's about holding on to what has proven to work, and has proven to be true. In contrast, today's self-styled "Progressives" aren't interested in change for the better, or actually moving forward, as their name might suggest, but are blindly and mindlessly committed to ideas and policies which have proven to be either ineffective or disastrous, and have been thoroughly discredited by science and history.