XNoctemNacimur's Blog

I'm assuming that we now understand there is a difference between advocating socialism and opposing laissez faire capitalism from the conclusion of the conversation in my last blog. now that we know the difference i'd like take an honest look at John Edwards health care plan.

In short he wants to open up an optional single payer system, essentially opening Medicare to anyone who wants to pay in to it. keep in mind this is not mandatory, if you want in, you pay in, if you do not wish to buy in you do not have to. given that with the current numbers, Medicare being not for profit, operates at 5% of the overhead of private market insurance companies this health care option will likely be much less expensive in general and could cover the uninsured as well as those who are insured at a lesser cost than your current private market insurance.

i know what you're thinking "BUT THATS SOCIALISM!" but it isn't and here is why. if united health group wants to continue giving William McGuire $2.1 billion in stock options, they can. all this system will do is add more fierce competition to the market. and as we know a competitive market is paramount to good capitalism. it will help to drive health costs down while they compete to come up with a better insurance plan. the best part of his plan is is nobody is taking away options or telling you that you have to have this plan. just giving you more choices

that is why John Edwards scares people, the right couldn't run against him, they know it, why do you think they and the corporate media have anointed Hillery as our candidate when truth of the matter is most liberals can't stand her. yet conservatives can't get her name out of their mouth, why? because they have chosen who they want to run against. same thing happened to Howard Dean last cycle. the right didn't want to run against him, the right wing had a million dollar ad in Iowa slamming Dean a month before their caucus, simply put Kerry was a pushover, and thats who the bush crew wanted to run against.

After being told by many conservatives that they fear the government and reflecting on Regan's 9 scariest words i have developed a theory concerning the very roots of this fear.

first of all lets look at what exactly there is to fear. we have a representative democracy, that is that the people place votes on a person based on their positions of many issues. the representative then takes their position in the government and represents their constituents based on the platform that won them an election and direct contact through many devises including but not limited to town hall meetings or polling. if a representative breaks the law or does not represent the will of the people, it is the duty of the people to defeat them in the next election or in extreme cases express the will to bring impeachment.

thus to fear this system is to fear the will of the majority, this fear is indicative of a will to have a minority rule the majority, thus overriding democracy. it come back to an authoritarian mentality. authoritarians don't want to collectively solve problems and search for the best solution, they want a patriarchal figure some one to "lead" by telling one what to do and how to do it, even what is best for them, rather than using diplomacy to come to a consensus of what is best for the community as a whole. Given this trend it is easy to understand why under republican rule the "haves" be come the "have mores" and the middle class becomes the working poor. power is shifted from the majority that they fear to the people with the capital to own the power. as power scratches money's back and visa versa.

along with the authoritarian mentality the role of government changes as well. a conservative views government as a authority to punish those who break laws, in my opinion this is why conservatives are concerned with what a person does in the bedroom, whether or not the drugs a person uses are illegal or not, hell some are even worried about how much porn you access. for a conservative its about enforcing personal morality. this is why things such as gay rights, and abortions are such hot button issues for them.

meanwhile a liberal views the government as an institution of the people, it sees government as a tool to regulate and level the playing field so that all may play and have a chance at the American dream. thus they create programs to help the people as a whole such as social security which was created as an insurance to protect the people from poverty. they are less concerned with the bedroom and more concerned about the morality of the nation as a whole, if we have poor or sick struggling among us it is immoral to do nothing about it.

the last thing i want to touch on is what we should fear within our government. quite simply it is corruption, it is pandering to special interests. a revolving door where a CEO can become for vice president and watch his stock options from his previous employer skyrocket due to policy created with new found power. it is special interest filling the pockets of our representatives to manipulate policy, not in the direction of the will of the people but to their own agenda.