Ever heard of Dahlia Lithwick? No? Don’t feel bad. I hadn’t either until I read her piece of … something or other … on Slate about the Supreme Court hearing this week on Obamacare. Posted on 04/01/2012 3:52:45 AM PDT by Kaslin
Ever heard of Dahlia Lithwick? No? Don’t feel bad. I hadn’t either until I read her piece of … something or other … on Slate about the Supreme Court hearing this week on Obamacare.
A quick Google search turned up her Wikipedia entry, which tells me she’s a Canadian and contributing editor at Newsweek and senior editor at Slate. In other words, a committed leftist.
This morning in America’s highest court, freedom seems to be less about the absence of constraint than about the absence of shared responsibility, community, or real concern for those who don’t want anything so much as healthy children, or to be cared for when they are old.
It’s difficult to tell whether Ms. Lithwick is simply making this up or just dumb. The end result is the same either way. She wants cradle-to-grave government care for everyone. It makes you wonder why she no longer lives in Canada, where they have it, or why so many ungrateful cancer and critical care patients leave the utopia north of the border to come to the United States to receive life-saving treatment.
I’ll address the “shared responsibility” insanity in minute, but first let’s think about the rest of what’s there.
Community. To progressives, “community” means whatever they need it to mean that day. The “black community,” the “Hispanic community,” the “gay community,” the “white community,” the “Italian community,” the “whatever sub-set they need to highlight for victimization or demonization community.” You’d think they were all math majors with all the division they foist on us so they can play various groups against one another to advance their agenda.
Backers of the multi-cultural agenda seek to remove the melting pot that made this country great from the heat that fueled it. Instead, they want to create a coagulated mess that they can mold how they see fit. They don’t want us thinking of ourselves as Americans. All kinds of craziness, such as patriotism and true community spirit, could break out. Instead, they need to foster division to keep people in various Lego-shaped blocks they can stick together and snap apart when it suits them. Look how they’ve pitted the “black community” against the “Hispanic community” in the Trayvon Martin case before any investigation is concluded.
Actually, they’ve gone further than that, they’ve created a new race, the “white Hispanic.” I would say the “white Hispanic community” but there is only one member of that group, George Zimmerman, so it’s not a community, it’s just sick.
As for people wanting healthy children and to be cared for when they’re old, we have that covered.
First and foremost is family. Progressives never admit this, but children raised in two-parent homes are much, much better off than children who are not. That’s simply not possible for all children, but it makes no sense – none – to celebrate single-parent homes.
For children from single-parent homes or two-parent homes who have a difficult time making ends meet, we have Medicaid. The problem with Medicaid, the major reason it is breaking state budgets, is progressives have turned this safety net program for the poor into a hammock for the middle class. There’s no reason a family of four making $80,000 should be enrolled in Medicaid, but that is the standard now in many states. What incentive does a person have to purchase something they can leech from the government?
For the elderly, we have Medicare and Social Security. They’re driving the entire country into financial ruin, which progressives strangely seem to enjoy – but no one talks about changing those programs for anyone within 10 years of retirement. Yet, even here progressives lie. They find one elderly woman who is “forced to eat cat food so she can afford her prescriptions” and present her as the norm. They tell our parents and grandparents this could be them if things go wrong. They do this, by the way, while claiming Republicans use scare tactics to sway voters.
They trot out this cat-food person out for a press conference, pretend there are millions like her, then trot her off stage and – like a prop from cancelled Broadway show – throw her back in the closet and move on. Inevitably, the good people of this country hear about this woman and step up to help her – for real, not for show.
That’s the greatness of the American people – all you have to do is point out someone truly in need, and we step up to help. We do so without a government program, without raising taxes, without progressive “solutions.” That’s why you never hear of them after they’ve been helped – the assistance actually helps them achieve independence, which means they become useless to progressives.
Until today, I couldn’t really understand why this case was framed as a discussion of “liberty.” This case isn’t so much about freedom from government-mandated broccoli or gyms. It’s about freedom from our obligations to one another, freedom from the modern world in which we live.
Shared responsibility? Freedom from our obligations to one another?
Having done my taxes recently, I can assure Ms. Lithwick I take care of my “obligations,” just as I assume she does. But I’d be willing to bet she lives comfortably and that she availed herself of every deduction her accountant could find. There’s nothing wrong with that, aside from the hypocrisy of refusing to live the life she would impose on others.
But what about the 49 percent of American who pay no income tax? According the Ms. Lithwick we have “obligations to one another.” What is their obligation?
What is the obligation of the heroin addict I routinely see outside the 7-Eleven near where I live to me? To society? If society needs junkies begging and passing out on the sidewalks, he’s holding up his end of the bargain. But I’m pretty sure we don’t. Where is Ms. Lithwick’s “shared responsibility” for him?
I buy him a hotdog now and then, when he’s awake and coherent. Should I send half the bill for that to Slate?
When I was a porter at a Lincoln-Mercury dealership, a fellow porter had five children from three women and a pregnant new girlfriend – all at the ripe age of 22. I paid my taxes, so I took care of my end. He wasn’t paying child support (we were making $8 an hour), so I’m pretty sure he wasn’t taking care of his end. Where is his responsibility? I hope he’s changed but somehow doubt it.
The fact is we have no government-imposed “obligation to one another,” no “shared responsibility.” Nor should we. We’re responsible for ourselves. We care for others through charity. But that’s charity with our own money – given of our own volition. Progressives are quite good at giving away other people’s money. But as the anemic, embarrassingly low charitable giving numbers of the last few Democrat nominees for president show, they suck at helping others when it involves reaching into their own pockets.
So, Ms. Lithwick, we don’t want government reaching into our pockets to pay for what progressives deem moral. We’re quite capable of doing that on our own, thank you very much.
Our Constitution limits what government can do to or for us for a reason – because we’re supposed to do things for ourselves. A government powerful enough to make us engage in commerce so it can regulate it is a government that can make us buy broccoli or join a gym. And while broccoli and gym memberships are good things, we have the freedom to not buy them. And that is a great thing.
If Ms. Lithwick and her fellow progressives don’t like it, the Constitution was made to be amended. But that is the road progressives always refuse to take, because that is the road down which they find out just how unpopular their agenda truly is.
Read the major biographies on Wilson, TR, and FDR...what you find is hatred of the Constitution. This simple, thoughtful document, which protects our rights through a division of federal from state authority...is hated.
Progressives want to find ways around the Constitution,not to work through it.
That’s a fact.
Progressives want to find ways around the Constitution,not to work through it.That's right. Where they can, they try to dismantle it. Where they can't do that, they make end runs around it, or, with enough power (Obama) they punch a hole in the line and go right up the middle.
PREDICTION: We will be hunting down Progressives with dogs before this wrecking of our country and economy over. My dog recognizes them by their stink.
Get that? She thinks it is prima facie evidence that the law is constitutional simply because the executive branch didn't defend it! This woman is just plain stupid.
No kidding they don’t like America. I’ve been listening to them complain for the last forty years. We keep institutionalizing their ideas, and they still don’t like America. I’m waiting for the American public to figure this out.
As John Galt said, the only obligation one has to his fellow men is reason and respect for their right to be free from force.
The article doesn’t talk about it much, but the title states that Progressives do not like the US. They really don’t like people very much and the US is just the worst of the lot.
Mankind is seen as despoiling the idyllic earth for its rightful owners, the animals with all our commerce, evil corporations, and the like. They see these activities as the driving force for the ruination of the planet. The US are the ring leaders in the commerce and evil corporations department, so they get the brunt of the hate.
China would probably have trouble with these types but China wouldn’t pay any attention to them after they threw them in jail or just disappeared them.
| If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that. I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way. |
“That’s a fact.”
Indeed it is. We’ve been fighting these ‘Progressives’ much longer than most people realize.
Everyone should take 10 minutes and read Teddy Roosevelt’s first Inaugural Speech from 1910.
“New Nationalism”
http://patriotpost.us/document/the-new-nationalism/
A lot of authoritarian, liberals hate individuality and the individual person making decisions and choices without the approval from their so-called wisdom which is really dominance and control.
You are right, Rapscallion. Or, alternatively, we will be defending ourselves from them as they assault our properties and try to take ourlives.
My grandparents, born in the 1880s, used to occasionally go off on a rant against Woodrow Wilson, who they absolutely despised. They were young farmers just starting out when Wilson was President.
Obama is merely stating that the courts are a poor choice to bring about the radical change he wants. This was true then and will hopefully remain so in the future.
I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.
Obama and his ilk have every right to have this as their goal and to organize away to get there. As long as they do it within the Constitution, which would have to be amended to reach their goal.
The Constitution was designed to be amended. Conservatives should never object to the tactics of anyone proposing an amendment, as this is exactly how the Founders intended us to make radical changes, though we might very well object to their goal and oppose it.
Why am I thinking that there's got to be a bird hiding in there somewhere?
Lithwick is just another Fluke.
Lithwick once wrote that she couldn't understand why Congress should worry about the constitutionality of legislation. That's what the Supreme Court is for!
From each according to his shared responsibility....and we’ll decide what that responsibility is.....to each according to how loud he complains or how many votes he has.
Karl would love these people.
This is the crux of the issue. Progressives see our "obligation to one another" i.e. the greater good for society, as something that must be elicited from the citizenry by way of government regulation. Government seizes our assets via taxes toward that end. It is no accident that at a recent prayer breakfast Obama likened paying tribute to government as consummate with attending to Jesus' mandate to "feed the hungry, clothe the naked and heal the sick."
Whereas, it is true that freedom cannot endure within a society that pays no mind to our "obligation to one another". . .it surely will not endure when government takes it upon itself to dictate what those obligations are, how they should be carried out and what are the penalties imposed when those obligations are not met. This is why the Founders stressed that our Constitution would only function with a "religious and moral" populace. President James Monroe said it very succinctly:
“Republics demanded virtue. Monarchies could rely on coercion and “dazzling splendor” to suppress self-interest or factions; republics relied on the goodness of the people to put aside private interest for public good.”
Obama's vision of America is one that must be controlled by "coercion and dazzling splendor" . . .in other words, a soft tyranny.
The challenge that we face is on two important fronts. Clearly, Obama's mad grab for power must be rejected and our Constitution upheld. However, this is not the only work that must be done to revive our liberty. Recent studies have shown, that Americans no longer agree on what morality or virtue really is nor what is the public role of virtue in society. The Left has made sure that we relinquish our firm hold on the culture consensus on values that once defined our common heritage as Americans. Common values consummate with being American, is the emulsifying agent in the melting pot.
Tocqueville, in observing America in the 1830's, noted that
"Americans combine the notion of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds that it is nearly impossible for them to conceive of one without the other."
The Left, on the one hand, destroys the moral foundation of the nation, while, on the other hand, insists that our moral obligations are simply to acquiesce to government tyranny. Our freedom, "a gift of God", demands we resist the tyranny of unconstitutional government, however, ultimately, it is the "goodness of the people" as Monroe noted, that must revive the Republic and make it pleasing to God. (sorry for the windbag post. . .it's Sunday morning and, also, its the third cup of Joe!!)
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