Conservative Confusion
February 27th, 2006 | by Dr. Forbush |My favorite comment in the last few weeks has got to be:
Oh YES! America is ready for some PROGRESSIVE PASSION! So go for it Democrats! Let’s hear some passion for tax increases! Jimmy Carter was very passionate about his crude oil tax!
And three cheers for abortion! A chicken in every pot! An Abortion for every pregnancy!
Let’s hear some more democrat passion about surrender! I can hear the glee in the voices of the liberal old media when they report on a possible civil war in Iraq. Just admit it! It’s your wildest dream!
This was in response to my post on “passion.” Obviously conservatives can be just as passionate as they are misinformed. Their passion for tax cuts has resulted in borrowing to cover the pork barrel ear marks of the “conservative” Republican congress and an unnecessary war for pride in the Middle East. It turns out that every American man, woman and child are borrowing $10/day to cover the cost of this insanity. This means that every individual is borrowing $300.00 per month or a family of four is borrowing $1200.00 per month. Do you borrow this much money on your credit cards and not pay it off? Is this fiscally conservative? What is going to happen when we reach our limit and China and India don’t want to loan us this money any more? After all, who has the power in a loan/lender relationship? Are we gradually forfeiting our economic place in the world?
But, to listen to the blogger commenting on my piece we would think that because we have a Republican congress and a Republican president we are safe from the government robbery that we have suffered through taxation. Let me see; I paid about $500.00 less on my taxes or about $1500.00 since the Bush tax cuts, and the government has borrowed about $64,000.00 on my behalf over the same amount of time. Hey, I can do the math and I understand that the Republicans are bilking me. It’s too bad that the Republicans like my uninformed commenter can’t do math. Maybe its because the money to education has been cut to fund a war in the Middle East?
And, then we have abortion, which is another issue used passionately by the conservatives to vilify the Democrats. I would challenge any person at all to find one person in America that supports the idea of an abortion for every pregnancy, let alone the leaders of any progressive political movement. I believe that the progressive stand has been and still is that abortions are not great, but we should leave that choice up to the pregnant woman and not let the government interfere. It’s funny how conservatives are eager to guard the right to their machine guns, automatic weapons and other artillery but they want to take the right of a woman to choose whether or not to raise a child into adulthood and give that choice to the government. But, then they refuse to admit this hypocrisy, because the constitution mentions forming militias, but doesn’t mention women’s rights. But either way, you can see the ridiculous passion expressed on the subject in this comment.
And, finally the passion for aggression is obvious. Of course it would be great if all Republicans were this passionate about aggression, because they would be fighting with each other so often that they would just be a laughing stock. But, this particular comment displays the love of war above the love of peace. This might be because war is filled with violent action and peace is filled with diplomacy. Peace is obviously more complex and more difficult to contemplate than war. And sometimes those at the lower end of the intellectual scale desire proof of progress and therefore opt for the violent solution. But this anger is a passion that isn’t easy to control.
Americans don’t like passion as a matter of culture. In America passion is often identified with a loss of control. And, as I pointed out in my previous post, conservatives have used expression of liberal passion as a symbol of liberalism to be mocked. And, because of this the passionate liberals have shied away from expressing their passion. But, when the general public views this passion, the emotion draws them in. Beautiful pictures of rainforest juxtaposed with the devastation that man has wrought evoke response to this issue.
Please keep the comments coming in; I love to hear from both sides of each issue. Of course, some issues only have one side, like the DPW ports deal…
Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit
19 Responses to “Conservative Confusion”
By pjordansr on Feb 27, 2006 | Reply
Unfortunately, a large portion of my past brethren can have this take on things…all or nothing. Liberal, conservative, Republican, or Democrat, all should agree that common sense is that nothing is absolute. It is this same mindless thought process that chased me from the Grand Old Party in the first place. I will cautiously add, though, it is a confused state of thought on the part of the liberals that has presented a poor choice of Candidates from the Democratic Party and forced us into eight long years of Bush-Whacking. I only hope that the responder spoken of might only wake up and pull his head out of the past long enough to passionately embrace the future.
By liberal vet on Feb 27, 2006 | Reply
Pretty amazing Doc, I love your posts. Though I consider myself a passionate liberal I can not understand for the life of me how a conservatives brain works. Everything I believe in peace, environmental protection, alternative fuel sources, reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear arms etc. I fear the basic neo-con would consider unattainable and more liberal pablum. When did the word liberal become a negative? It derives from Latin for freedom if I am not mistaken liberates. Yet in some circles I feel vilified made to feel spineless and an inferior patriot to these zealots. Since I am also an atheist I am doubly vilified. As you indicated just because it’s not in the constitution doesn’t make it wrong. We need national health coverage that’s not in the constitution either. LV
By Dr. Forbush on Feb 27, 2006 | Reply
Liberal Vet, I heard this morning on talk radio from both Robert Reich and Bruce Bartlett that National Health Care is going to happen, the only question is when. The Republican “Pill Bill” seems to have hastened the inevidability. Reich of course is a moderate liberal from the Clinton administration and Bartlett is the fiscal conservative who wrote the anti-Bush book…
By liberal vet on Feb 27, 2006 | Reply
Well Doc national health care has to eventually become reality. As I have said previously ER visits for primary care needs are very expensive. Preventive medicine is always more cost effective than emergency care, as in letting a medical condition fester for a lengthy period. PS I’m not Ken. LV
By clb72 on Feb 27, 2006 | Reply
The way Republicans argue about taxes (i.e. spending money you actually have) and Iraq (we’re not losing, and if we are losing it’s not our fault, even if we control everything) and torture and outing CIA agents and the environment and health care are very familiar to me because I was once in the seventh grade. It doesn’t matter who’s right, or who’s smarter, or who cares more. All that matters is who is in control.
Republicans will yield to reasoned argument only to the extent that they have to to stay in power. They also will argue, perhaps less reasonably, in order to justify and cover up their fuckups, and to convince themselves that they care about things other than power. Hey, it’s understandable, power is corrupting like that. Just fight them every chance you get. Because their adolescent insecurities and power plays are ruining the planet.
By The Cranky Liberal on Feb 27, 2006 | Reply
Doc, that is good (and funny) stuff. Write more rants like this one!
By windspike on Feb 27, 2006 | Reply
Don’t let any of the repubs fool you. They are not about smaller government. They are about smaller governement for poor people and bigger benefits for folks who can become owners - that would be the already rich.
The person who left your comment was smoking crack easily gotten becuase the war on drugs is working so well.
By Dr. Forbush on Feb 27, 2006 | Reply
Cranky, What do you mean? I thought that everything I write is like this.
:-}
By gindy on Feb 27, 2006 | Reply
“Their passion for tax cuts has resulted in borrowing to cover the pork barrel ear marks of the “conservative” Republican congress and an unnecessary war for pride in the Middle East.”
Tax cuts don’t cause wasteful pork barrel spending. Wasteful spending causes pork barrel spending. US spending has gone from $1.98 trillion under Clinton to over $2.6 trillion under Bush today. That is the problem. Chasing businesses out of the country with high taxes and excessive regulations will not help America or our economy.
By Dr. Forbush on Feb 27, 2006 | Reply
Gindy,
Read a little closer. I didn’t say that tax cuts caused spending, I said tax cuts caused borrowing. The Republicans did not cut spending on their pet projects, like you said. You can’t spend money that you don’t have, unless you borrow it, and the Republicans like to spend money. They just like to spend it on killing people instead of helping people…
By icoman on Feb 27, 2006 | Reply
Thanks Doc, this highlights the “backlash” today being fueled by the Right. The wealthy, Harvard educated Republican CEO’s are pumping $zillions into fundamentalist religious groups in order to generate a working class uprising against wealthy, educated “liberals”. Yes, this sounds ridiculous but it is exactly what is happening today in the U.S. culture wars. The Right has raised a generation of education deprived anti-abortionists who blame the Hollywood stars and the Ivy league snobs for all the problems in the world because of their liberal agenda to destroy God. They sit around smoking crack and listening to The Wall. By taking economics out of the picture and by turning the working class against education, the Ruling Class has succeeded in creating separatism and hostility towards a perceived “liberal” enemy who is responsible for all their problems regardless of the fact that the Republicans own just about everything and now control just about all the government.
The wealthy Republicans have successfully turned the working people against wealth and education by convincing them that liberal scientists and college professors have given us abortion and immorality. That is why God is punishing America and why these poor workers are suffering so much. These wealthy Republcans, who own and support the media, have even convinced the public that liberal journalists run the media and are responsible for this Godless attack on the hard working, red state patriots.
Problems is, so far the Democrats have not been able to counter this well funded brainwashing.
By gindy on Feb 28, 2006 | Reply
” You can’t spend money that you don’t have, unless you borrow it, and the Republicans like to spend money.”
That’s the problem. We have the money. Tax revenues are higher than ever. That is not because tax cuts hurt the economy or deprived our government of money. It is because we have increased spending by almost $800 billion. That is it. Are you advocating that we spend money more responsibly or just that we take more money from working Americans by raising taxes? Under Bush the lowest bracket was reduced from 15% to 10%. Would you want to raise taxes on them as well again?
By tos on Feb 28, 2006 | Reply
Newsflash; Canada’s Universal Healthcare is on the verge of collapse. People are paying out of pocket because they can’t get the healthcare they need. How well can this work with a population much greater than theirs?
By windspike on Feb 28, 2006 | Reply
TOS, where’s your proof? The proof of your claims missing, we have to assume your just making it up. Certainly, in the blogisphere, the proof is in the links. Where are they?
By tos on Feb 28, 2006 | Reply
I will look for link. I heard it 2 times in the passed couple of weeks. But this is what universal helathcare will do for you.
Canadian health insurance is compulsory, monopolistic, and administered by the various provincial governments under strict control of the federal government. It is illegal for a Canadian citizen to carry private insurance coverage for any health care services covered by the government. Physicians are told by the government how much they can charge for their services; drug prices are set by the government. The supply of medical services in Canada is completely rationed, with no significant private alternative.
The alleged “low cost” of Canadian health care is thus no less a fraud than it was in the Soviet Union. Canadians may not pay the price in dollar terms … but they pay a steep price indeed in terms of care denied or delayed and the poor quality of service provided by unhappy medical practitioners whose incomes do not match their skill and training.
Take a Number and Wait
Long waiting lines are the worst flaw in the system. The Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, calculated in 2003 the average Canadian waited more than four months for treatment by a specialist once the referral was made by a general practitioner. According to the Fraser Institute’s work, the shortest median wait was 6.1 weeks for oncology (cancer) treatment without radiation. In some provinces, neurosurgery patients waited more than a year. A simple MRI requires, on average, a three-month wait in Canada.
Long waits for critical care are an uncalculated cost of the Canadian health care system. A price tag could easily be calculated by determining how much patients would be willing to pay to reduce or eliminate these waiting times. We do this calculation on a regular basis in the United States in determining the charges for all services provided. In the U.S., we choose to pay higher prices in order to get more immediate care; in Canada, patients have no choice but to wait.
By Dr. Forbush on Feb 28, 2006 | Reply
Tos,
I could also argue that pharmaceuticals are much cheaper in Canada, hence all of the traffic going into Windsor, Ontario for the purchase of drugs. But, it doesn’t really matter what Canada is doing when there are so many universal health care systems that work so well. But if you pass really stupid laws you are going to get really stupid results.
For example, I would guess that the Republican congress passed the prescription medicine bill in an effort to prove that universal health care wouldn’t work. They must have sat down and thought of all the possible problems and lumped them into that bill. Then 10 years from now they can say, “Don’t bother with Universal Health Care, look what happened with prescription medicine.”
But, I have experience with universal health care in Germany, and I can tell you that all the horror stories that the Republicans, anti-health care people and other fear mongering conservatives say about Universal Health Care isn’t true. The problem that you claimed for no private insurance in Canada does not apply in Germany. I used US insurance in Germany for two births and several other accidents and general medical check-ups. If you choose to pay extra for special attention, then feel free to do so. But when someone who doesn’t have the means wants to be inoculated for TB he can get it for free. This certainly stops the spread of infectious disease before instead of afterward. This simple type of health care actually saves money, instead of wasting it in Emergency Rooms.
But, the Republican prescription medicine bill made it illegal for the government to use its clout to bargain for deals on the medicine. Where did the capitalism go? Obviously the bill was passed to protect the special interests of the pharmaceutical companies, not the American people.
By windspike on Feb 28, 2006 | Reply
TOS. Still awaiting the links promised. Thanks my friend.