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stfuconservatives:

rabblevolunteer:

stfuconservatives:

haleighshine submitted:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/the-53-want-the-99-to-learn-from-their-example/

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Yeah, I’m surprised it took this long for the right-wing to come up with a counter-protest. There’s really no good way to counter the movement without coming off as a privileged ass, if there is I haven’t heard it. It is a simple fact that there are people out there who are out of work through no fault of their own, down on their luck and impoverished due to the unsustainable system we have.

It’s cute that they’re like “Oh well we’re doing fine, maybe you should work harder” but the reality is for every lucky content jerkass there are 10 more adults who’ve been shoved out of the middle-class and 20 students crippled by debt. In general I don’t give much credence to the 53% counter-protesters. It’s pretty much impossible to rally people around “Things aren’t that bad!” when they are objectively bad by pretty much any metric.

-Joe

Yeah, I’ve seen people with the “53%” anti-protest have signs that say, “I work three jobs to pay my mortgage and it’s because I work hard.”

Uh. Okay. Working three jobs isn’t exactly a dream life, is it? It’s also not what the OWS people want. It’s great that you work three jobs but some of us can’t even get work for ONE. It’s not an entitled, unrealistic demand to want jobs for the unemployed, especially when the unemployment rate is as high as it is.

You shouldn’t have to work three jobs to pay for your mortgage after your house has depreciated by 60% in value. You shouldn’t have to work three jobs so you can pay your bills and put food on the table for your kids. You shouldn’t have to work three jobs or drive 90 minutes to and from work each way. The 53% ARE part of the 99% and they shouldn’t have to work three jobs so some CEO who helped crash the economy can get a 41 million dollar bonus this year.

I guarantee that CEO isn’t going to give a FUCK about your three jobs or your depreciated house that you can’t sell when they are relaxing on their yacht in St. Barts.

Yeah, these people are still the 99%. They can call themselves whatever they want but they are still among the people getting fucked over by the 1%. They are just complacent enough in their fucking over position that they are lashing out at those that are messing with what they perceive as a good thing.

It’s great that you’re busting your ass into oblivion to make rent but that doesn’t mean it’s the only way. That’s not a life to aspire to, that’s not an America to be proud of.

-Joe

letterstomycountry:

stfuconservatives:

coeus:

stfuconservatives:

-Joe

To clarify, I’m pretty sure they were applauding at the idea of freedom and personal responsibility, as opposed to the idea of letting poor people die. 

To further clarify, I’m pretty sure the context of the question did not involve “poor people” but someone who had chosen for themselves not to purchase health insurance because they “didn’t need it”, and therefore was forced to deal with the consequences of not doing so. Which relates to the idea of freedom and personal responsibility. 

To clarify even further, I think you missed the part where Ron Paul said that when he was practising medicine, his hospital didn’t turn people away who needed treatment but were uninsured. And you also missed the part where he says that responsibility should be placed on society, not government, to help people out, ie: churches, neighbours, family, etc, etc. voluntarily coming together to help someone in need.

To clarify some more for you, if people can’t afford healthcare, they can’t afford healthcare and a government bureaucracy to administer that healthcare. 

-Ira.

Their idea of freedom and personal responsibility allows poor people to die. Their idea of freedom and personal responsibility dictates that health care is a privilege and not a right. I do believe that the government should administer that health care, what good is a massive defense department to a country whose citizenry is dying from being unable to afford tooth extractions?

-Joe

Coeus’s response is filled with incomplete platitudes and ends with an intellectually dishonest observation: of course someone who can’t afford healthcare can’t afford the government bureaucracy necessary to administer that healthcare.  The whole point of such a system is that the haves provide for the have-nots.  Ron Paul is advocating for the same thing, only in the private sector, sans a compulsory scheme of taxation and publicly-provided services.  

The difference is that doing it through the mechanism of government creates an enforceable positive freedom, as opposed to an unenforceable negative freedom.  Which is not to say that all negative freedoms are unenforceable; but the type of voluntarism advocated here means precisely that: no one is compelled to contribute to your medical bills instead of buy a 60” plasma screen TV.

The reason why Ron Paul’s type of voluntarism used to work is because communities used to be closer-knit for necessity’s sake.  Communities used to stick together because they had to (borrowing a cup of sugar from the neighbor, and so forth).  Yet the very same individualism that Ron Paul advocates took a hold of our national conversation during the Reagan years, and the impact of that individualism is that people feel they don’t owe each other anything anymore.  A person who dies from a lack of health insurance, then, has died as a result of their own refusal to provide for themselves; a refusal to take advantage of the freedom society has afforded them, rather than the more complex reality of an inter-related nexus of opaque, sometimes loosely connected series of incidents which are the product of both external and internal forces, which comprise the circumstances of any given person’s life.

A completely voluntaristic society is one in which people and providers of services are free to decline that service to others, meaning that in the whirlpool of human interaction that is society, some people will inevitably get thrown out in the wash, whether due to bad luck, imprudence, the exploitative acts of others, or more likely, some combination of all three.  And it’s not always the same people who this happens to.  Misfortune can occur to anyone, from any walk of life, of any race, class, creed, gender, orientation, and so on.  And the fatal flaw of this voluntarism is that there is no enforcement mechanism by which to compel unusually self-interested individuals, who may be and often are in positions of real power, to utilize their resources to alleviate the troubles of vulnerable citizens.  

Coeus even has a post on her blog that perfectly illustrates my point.  Doesn’t this photo demonstrate that this sort of absolutist voluntarism doesn’t actually work in practice?

(Source: stfuconservatives)