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.
That's because the word itself is tailored to imply some relationship with progress, but in reality, it does not.
Progressives don't want to make our country better, they want to make it different.
By equality, in a democracy, is to be understood, equality of civil rights, and not of condition. Equality of rights necessarily produces inequality of possessions; because, by the laws of nature and of equality, every man has a right to use his faculties in an honest way, and the fruits of his labor, thus acquired, are his own. But some men have more strength than others; some more health; some more industry; and some more skill and ingenuity, than others; and according to these, and other circumstances the products of their labor must be various, and their property must become unequal. The rights of property must be sacred, and must be protected; otherwise there could be no exertion of either ingenuity or industry, and consequently nothing but extreme poverty, misery, and brutal ignorance.
Of the Several Forms of Government, Section VI, St. George Tucker, "View of the Constitution of the United States" 1803
Their concept of 'social justice' isn't about equality rights, but equality of condition. That's what wealth distribution is all about!
A totally socialist concept if there ever was one, IMHO.
“Progressives Simply Do Not Like The United States”
I don’t think there’s much that progressive like. As a generalization I find them to be the most sour and joyless people I’ve ever encountered, and they just don’t enjoy the miracle of being alive so they spend all their effort trying to nanny state others into their own state of misery.
Lithwick's profoundly ignorant comments and Hunter's reaction to them have triggered exactly the kind of discussion among Freepers that needs to be going on all over America today.
As a matter of fact, this is the discussion which GOP presidential candidates need to have with voters for Obama's so-called "progressive" "redistributive" vision for America conflicts with his oath to uphold the Constitution.
Those, like Lithwick, who come up with the touchy, feely "shared responsibility," or "obligation to others" descriptions never bother to tell us that the "progressive" vision requires a heavy-handed political regime to enforce its mandates, and that regime, in whatever combinations it may try to manifest itself, is precisely what the U. S. Constitution is designed to prevent.
That is why they are frustrated. The Constitution stands in the way of their custom-designed method of "changing" America from a free society to one in which some imperfect people plan, direct, manage and control all the other imperfect people.
That is their perverted vision of "justice," and they cannot enforce it without "changing" the Constitution, and they know that they cannot "change" it according to its own provisions; therefore, they must use Trojan Horses like "health care" and "shared responsibility" to trick "the People" into abandoning individual freedom.
"Until the people have, by some solemn and authoritative act, annulled or changed the established form, it is binding upon them collectively, as well as individually; and no presumption or even knowledge of their sentiments, can warrant their representatives [the executive, judiciary, or legislature]; in a departure from it prior to such an act." - Alexander Hamilton
In the first of the eighty-five "Federalist Papers," Alexander Hamilton emphasized that:
"... it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection or choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."
The Framers knew that the passage of time would surely disclose imperfections or inadequacies in the Constitution, but these were to be repaired or remedied by formal amendment, not by legislative action or judicial construction (or reconstruction). Hamilton (in The Federalist No. 78) was emphatic about this:
"Until the people have, by some solemn and authoritative act, annulled or changed the established form, it is binding upon them collectively, as well as individually; and no presumption, or even knowledge of their sentiments, can warrant their representatives in a departure from it prior to such an act."
Last 5 paras. excerpted from:
Our Ageless Constitution - Part VII (1987) "Do We Have a Living Constitution?" (Publisher: W. David Stedman Associates; W. D. Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Eds.) ISBN 0-937047-01-5 (Essay adapted by Editors for publication in this Volume in consultation with Dr. Walter Berns from Berns' article by the same title in National Forum, The Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Fall 1984)
I tuned on Leftist talk Radio on Friday, the Mike Malloy show. He seriously was saying the Supreme Court is now “illegitimate” and should be done away with, because 9 people should never be able to overturn law passed by congress. He also advocated another Civil War, but this time kicking “bumpkin land” as he called it out of the Union, referring of course to the red states. This is how sick and twisted and dangerous the left has got.
This is NOT the Democrat party of your parents and grandparents.
Another great post by you. Thanks
I don't know if you realize it, but your link leads to this article that I posted
Do they wear their hair that way to imply that someone could put up with them long enough to participate in coitus with them?
Thanks, Kaslin. “Posting after wife’s big birthday party last night and before coffee this morning” — need to watch out for that!
Your link, of course, is the right one.
They should all move to Sweden!
right on.
If the government can force us to buy health insurance, it can write our weekly shopping lists for us, force us to join gyms and all that. It can mandate how we spend our own income.
We have become serfs and slaves. This could no longer be considered a free country.
“bumpkin land” is supporting and feeding the rest of the country
The best way to fight against the government take over of health care is to draw out this primary to the convention. Then,if Romney wants to win, he would be forced to finally denounce RomneyCare or pass the nomination to someone who will rip it out by the roots.
A Romney advisor has been saying that after the Supreme Court throws out the federal mandate, to claim that Romney was right along, that the only right way to do it is with a state mandate.
I think that Obama’s plan is to help Romney secure the nomination before the Supremes rule, so that he can offer to withdraw the mandate and call for it to be replaced with state mandates, if the court will allow the rest of health care law to stand.
It will be a win-win for Obama and Romney and a heads they win, tails, we lose, for conservative voters.
No Obama and No Romney!
Any conservative who thinks a state-wide mandate, funded and managed by DC, is any improvement is a blithering moron.
Well, I guess we have a lot of morons on FreeRepublic, all Romney supporters.
The Ron Paul campaign, in WA, has thrown their delegates to Santorum, in an effort to slow down Romney. You know if the libertarians are willing to throw in with Santorum, that they know that RomneyCare is a major threat.
Here’s hoping that some of the other states follow suit.
Progs live in a fantasy world of their own making. They do not like the real world so they try to change things to match the fantasy they imagine—one that doesn’t and couldn’t exist.
You see it on TV a great deal. Corporations bad, poor people good. Ect... But its not real. We need realists to lead us—sadly that takes a spine and such things are few and far between in politics.
Call me when you’re ready. I mean it. the first one I’ll shoot is my kid brother. He’s the most vile , pugnacious little leftist sh!t in know. I kid you not. I’m glad my mother has left this world and my dad is infirm. My Dad, his greatest political hero is Franco.
This is the woman who told Obama to nominate “some cross between Rachel Maddow and Emma Goldman” to the Supreme Court.
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