Saturday, April 14, 2007
Odd Thoughts for a Saturday Morning
My friend M, whom I consider to be a complete right wingnut, trades insults with me by e-mail at least twice a week. In his latest, he included this comparison between "conservative" and "liberal." I will leave it to you to decide which of us is the nuttier.
First, his definition is not new; I'm sure I've seen it before.
Conservative Beliefs:
Liberal Beliefs:
What's new to me is that the RW nuts have added the line on global warming to make it a political issue. It shouldn't be.
I am not familiar with any "liberal" comparison of "liberal" with "conservative." I won't try to construct such a list myself. Rather, I choose to punch a few holes in my friend M's definition of the two. First, it's big news to me that free enterprise, freedom of speech, self reliance, and freedom of religion are beliefs that only conservatives have. There's a question about the meaning of the second amendment right to bear arms: is that an individual right or is it the right of the States to have their own independent militias? That's still an unsettled question. At any rate, conservatives in cities like Los Angeles are just as appalled as liberals whenever an innocent child is killed by gunfire from a street gang member, and when the police find that gangs have superior weapons to the ones we provide to our policemen.
My point is that, according to M's list, nearly all of us are "conservative." The only persons not included are some criminals and a few hard-core dedicated communists. Even communists believe in self-reliance. A fundamental flaw in M's list is that it isn't useful as a means of classifying opinions.
Now, what does M have to say about liberals? Obviously he regards them with scorn and contempt. Don't worry; that's just one of M's insults. I get even with him in the next round of e-mails. Aside from that, what is wrong about the list for liberals?
Government Regulation: Contrary to what Libertarians and the Cato Institute would have us believe, private enterprise does not remain competitive without some rules. Monopolies are forbidden. Conspiracies to fix prices are forbidden. Companies are required to label their products and provide printed warnings of any hazards regarding a product. These are sensible rules that we all agree with. Someone has to enforce them. An impartial policeman is needed to keep free markets free and competitive. We all pay the policeman to do that; it is one of the functions of government. You may argue that some regulations are unnecessary and burdensome. No one disagrees with that possibility. The necessity of a particular regulation must be settled by the public and not by industry.
The Government takes care of everyone: I certainly hope that government would treat everyone fairly. A great man, our sixteenth President, said that government should do for people what people can't do for themselves. Perhaps M favors a government that takes care of only a select few. We have a tendency toward such a government now. The Bush Administration is concerned about caring for the wealth of the rich, by keeping their taxes low, and caring for the feelings of the christian fundamentalists by forbidding federal funding of embryonic stem cell research and by advocating against abortion and gay marriage. It's not greatly concerned about the lives of the volunteers who are fighting Bush's War in Iraq nor about the lives of their families. The care or neglect is shown in the funding priorities of the administration.
Only Government has (controls) guns: People who call themselves liberals have all sorts of attitudes regarding the ownership and use of guns. You attitude depends on where you live. A farmer uses a gun to protect his chickens from the hawk. Men in small towns and on farms in some States like to go deer hunting in the fall. Rural people tend to regard a gun as a useful and necessary tool. City folk don't shoot at hawks and don't spend their vacation time hunting deer. To them, a gun is something a policeman uses to protect them, or something a mugger uses to rob them, or something gang members use to kill each other. City folk would feel more comfortable if guns didn't exist. If they didn't exist, the police wouldn't need them, either. There are certainly some liberals who passionately desire strict regulation of hand guns, dealing with who is allowed to own or use one, how they are marketed and sold, the kind of ammunition available for them, and what type of gun is allowed to be sold to the public. A lot of the controversy has to do with automatic or semi-automatic weapons: weapons that can fire many bullets for one pressing of the trigger. Farmers have no interest in such weapons. Neither do deer hunters. Gangs and other criminals like them. The police generally do not carry such weapons.
Freedom of speech you agree with (witness the treatment of conservative speakers on campus): It's just plain nutty to conflate the behavior of rude, impolite college students with liberalism. I suspect that what the students object to is not the "conservative" content of a particular speech but the obvious lies and half-truths that so many "conservative" speakers utter. If a speaker states that he believes in a society in which everyone has an equal chance for success but must achieve success through his or her own efforts, I don't see why anyone would object. However, if the speaker goes on to say, as Milton Friedman once said before a college audience, that there is no poverty and there are no poor people in the United States, he deserves to be booed.
Blind Belief in the Only True Religion (Global Warming): Now, there is an assertion that is just plain nutty. I won't bother to respond to it.
Recently, M, H, S, R, and other friends have been e-mailing me and each other about global warming and universal health care. Now I admit that universal health care is a rather radical idea. I'm not sure it's a liberal idea. It's probably to the ideological left of many liberals. However, the existence of Global Warming has been condeded by almost everyone except James Inhofe, a Senator from an obscure mid-western State. It is not sure what the consequences will be. One prediction is that the levels of the oceans will rise several feet.
I keep trying to think of a model for a system of universal health care. Some Republicans (e.g., Mitt Romney, Arnold Schwarzenegger) think of the model of auto insurance. Everyone is required to carry liability insurance for his car. Why not require everyone to buy health insurance? For those who can't afford the premiums, the State will provide a subsidy. Mr. Bush proposes that the federal tax code be modified to allow health insurance premiums to be counted as deductions. (They were allowed until about 1970).
One model I think of is fire protection. In Los Angeles City and County, everyone is protected by fire departments who try mightily to protect homes threatened by wildfires. We don't buy insurance so that the fire crew will come; we pay taxes that pay for the fire departments. We do have fire insurance on our homes, but that is to pay for repairing the damage done, not to pay the fire crew to come to extinguish the fire. If we followed this model, we would set up numerous free health clinics where people could get treatment for various medical problems. The free clinics would also encourage people to participate in preventive medicine, just as fire departments encourage us to install smoke and fire alarms, give us advice on how to protect out houses from wildfires, how to build houses that resist burning, and the like. Really serious medical problems would be dealt with in hospital emergency rooms. As to health insurance, that would pay for expensive treatment needed to restore good health.
I'm not sure I like this model very much, but it would be an improvement over what we have now. It would be like the health care system in Los Angeles in 1960, when the county had funds to operate free health clinics. My wife and I used to go to such a clinic every year to get our flu shots.
Anyway, that's enough odd thinking for a Saturday morning, especially as it is almost noon.
First, his definition is not new; I'm sure I've seen it before.
Conservative Beliefs:
- Free enterprise.
- Self reliance
- Second amendment right to bear arms.
- Freedom of speech
- Freedom of religion
Liberal Beliefs:
- Government regulation.
- The government takes care of everyone.
- Only government has (controls) guns
- Freedom of speech you agree with (witness the treatment of conservative speakers on campus).
- Blind belief in the only true religion (Global Warming)
What's new to me is that the RW nuts have added the line on global warming to make it a political issue. It shouldn't be.
I am not familiar with any "liberal" comparison of "liberal" with "conservative." I won't try to construct such a list myself. Rather, I choose to punch a few holes in my friend M's definition of the two. First, it's big news to me that free enterprise, freedom of speech, self reliance, and freedom of religion are beliefs that only conservatives have. There's a question about the meaning of the second amendment right to bear arms: is that an individual right or is it the right of the States to have their own independent militias? That's still an unsettled question. At any rate, conservatives in cities like Los Angeles are just as appalled as liberals whenever an innocent child is killed by gunfire from a street gang member, and when the police find that gangs have superior weapons to the ones we provide to our policemen.
My point is that, according to M's list, nearly all of us are "conservative." The only persons not included are some criminals and a few hard-core dedicated communists. Even communists believe in self-reliance. A fundamental flaw in M's list is that it isn't useful as a means of classifying opinions.
Now, what does M have to say about liberals? Obviously he regards them with scorn and contempt. Don't worry; that's just one of M's insults. I get even with him in the next round of e-mails. Aside from that, what is wrong about the list for liberals?
Government Regulation: Contrary to what Libertarians and the Cato Institute would have us believe, private enterprise does not remain competitive without some rules. Monopolies are forbidden. Conspiracies to fix prices are forbidden. Companies are required to label their products and provide printed warnings of any hazards regarding a product. These are sensible rules that we all agree with. Someone has to enforce them. An impartial policeman is needed to keep free markets free and competitive. We all pay the policeman to do that; it is one of the functions of government. You may argue that some regulations are unnecessary and burdensome. No one disagrees with that possibility. The necessity of a particular regulation must be settled by the public and not by industry.
The Government takes care of everyone: I certainly hope that government would treat everyone fairly. A great man, our sixteenth President, said that government should do for people what people can't do for themselves. Perhaps M favors a government that takes care of only a select few. We have a tendency toward such a government now. The Bush Administration is concerned about caring for the wealth of the rich, by keeping their taxes low, and caring for the feelings of the christian fundamentalists by forbidding federal funding of embryonic stem cell research and by advocating against abortion and gay marriage. It's not greatly concerned about the lives of the volunteers who are fighting Bush's War in Iraq nor about the lives of their families. The care or neglect is shown in the funding priorities of the administration.
Only Government has (controls) guns: People who call themselves liberals have all sorts of attitudes regarding the ownership and use of guns. You attitude depends on where you live. A farmer uses a gun to protect his chickens from the hawk. Men in small towns and on farms in some States like to go deer hunting in the fall. Rural people tend to regard a gun as a useful and necessary tool. City folk don't shoot at hawks and don't spend their vacation time hunting deer. To them, a gun is something a policeman uses to protect them, or something a mugger uses to rob them, or something gang members use to kill each other. City folk would feel more comfortable if guns didn't exist. If they didn't exist, the police wouldn't need them, either. There are certainly some liberals who passionately desire strict regulation of hand guns, dealing with who is allowed to own or use one, how they are marketed and sold, the kind of ammunition available for them, and what type of gun is allowed to be sold to the public. A lot of the controversy has to do with automatic or semi-automatic weapons: weapons that can fire many bullets for one pressing of the trigger. Farmers have no interest in such weapons. Neither do deer hunters. Gangs and other criminals like them. The police generally do not carry such weapons.
Freedom of speech you agree with (witness the treatment of conservative speakers on campus): It's just plain nutty to conflate the behavior of rude, impolite college students with liberalism. I suspect that what the students object to is not the "conservative" content of a particular speech but the obvious lies and half-truths that so many "conservative" speakers utter. If a speaker states that he believes in a society in which everyone has an equal chance for success but must achieve success through his or her own efforts, I don't see why anyone would object. However, if the speaker goes on to say, as Milton Friedman once said before a college audience, that there is no poverty and there are no poor people in the United States, he deserves to be booed.
Blind Belief in the Only True Religion (Global Warming): Now, there is an assertion that is just plain nutty. I won't bother to respond to it.
Recently, M, H, S, R, and other friends have been e-mailing me and each other about global warming and universal health care. Now I admit that universal health care is a rather radical idea. I'm not sure it's a liberal idea. It's probably to the ideological left of many liberals. However, the existence of Global Warming has been condeded by almost everyone except James Inhofe, a Senator from an obscure mid-western State. It is not sure what the consequences will be. One prediction is that the levels of the oceans will rise several feet.
I keep trying to think of a model for a system of universal health care. Some Republicans (e.g., Mitt Romney, Arnold Schwarzenegger) think of the model of auto insurance. Everyone is required to carry liability insurance for his car. Why not require everyone to buy health insurance? For those who can't afford the premiums, the State will provide a subsidy. Mr. Bush proposes that the federal tax code be modified to allow health insurance premiums to be counted as deductions. (They were allowed until about 1970).
One model I think of is fire protection. In Los Angeles City and County, everyone is protected by fire departments who try mightily to protect homes threatened by wildfires. We don't buy insurance so that the fire crew will come; we pay taxes that pay for the fire departments. We do have fire insurance on our homes, but that is to pay for repairing the damage done, not to pay the fire crew to come to extinguish the fire. If we followed this model, we would set up numerous free health clinics where people could get treatment for various medical problems. The free clinics would also encourage people to participate in preventive medicine, just as fire departments encourage us to install smoke and fire alarms, give us advice on how to protect out houses from wildfires, how to build houses that resist burning, and the like. Really serious medical problems would be dealt with in hospital emergency rooms. As to health insurance, that would pay for expensive treatment needed to restore good health.
I'm not sure I like this model very much, but it would be an improvement over what we have now. It would be like the health care system in Los Angeles in 1960, when the county had funds to operate free health clinics. My wife and I used to go to such a clinic every year to get our flu shots.
Anyway, that's enough odd thinking for a Saturday morning, especially as it is almost noon.
Labels: auto insurance, fire damage to homes, fire insurance, liberal vs. conservative, Libertarian, Milton Friedman, second amendment, Universal health care
