Quote:
Originally Posted by GatorB
No one said dorr-door moron. Ok freedom and liberty means NO WELFARE or FOODSTAMPS or UNEMPLOYMENT or MEDICAID. Freedom means freedom to fuck up and pay the consequences of that and the liberty to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps.
|
Let's see how your idea of freedom works out, shall we?
Two young people get married and have a baby. They're not exactly wealthy, but they both work hard and manage to get by, and even save some money. Then, one day, the husband gets cancer. His health insurance covers part of the treatment, but not all of it, and because he's too sick to work, the bills pile up. Eventually, he dies, leaving the family in debt. The wife, however, keeps working. Right up until the day the company she works for has to downsize, and she gets laid off.
Freedom, then, means that if she's unlucky and has no family to rely on, she and her child get to starve in the streets?
Obviously, that's bullshit. One cannot have freedom without meaningful options. If you get dropped off in a desert without food and water, a thousand miles from the nearest oasis, you're not free.
Freedom isn't just the absence of interference that libertarians like to yap on about. It's also the presence of meaningful options. Freedom of speech becomes meaningless when one cannot get an education to develop the thoughts upon which speech is built. Physical freedom becomes meaningless without the health care to heal a crippled body.
If you were lying on the street with both of your legs broken, me saying "you're free to walk wherever you want to" would be quite absurd, wouldn't it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by GatorB
Sorry but if you need for borrow money from me I have the right to dictate the terms of how that money is used. Now you may think I don't, and that's fine, but if you don't wish to comply I'm not obligated to give you anything either.
|
They're not borrowing money from you. They're receiving money from a pool which they themselves paid into when they were working, and will start paying into again as soon as they find another job. It's a bit like the police - you pay for them even when you don't need them right away, so they'll be there when you do need them.
Suggesting that people lose their rights the moment they need assistance from funds they themselves paid into is quite ridiculous, really.