This comment was posted on YouTube at a video showing Barack Obama calling for a Civilian-type force in America. The comments at YouTube are a lot like the above... full of people convinced that Obama is the Anti-Christ and a man who will be the most Evil President ever.
I am baffled. Bush 43 was the President who shat all over the US constitution and started spying on his own citizens, and they call Obama a Hitler-type leader? Unreal!
Anyway... here's how the Right get it all wrong.
I've heard this from more than a few of my Right-wing friends. They hear about the poor and they immediately jump to the conclusion that they are lazy and incompetent. Lucky you that you were born in a family that had money from the start. Imagine if you were born in a trailer park to a broken family with a single parent working 2 or 3 lousy jobs just to barely scrape by. I know, the mother shouldn't have let herself get pregnant in the first place!!
It's always the poor persons fault for being poor, stupid and lazy.
I have to ask... if Jesus were here... would he be telling his followers to call the poor lazy and incompetent?!! How did the Right-wing party become so selfish?
I talked to a friend about the concept of Minimum Wage and he said, "who would work for minimum wage?" He was serious.
So I guess a lot of people on the Right really have no concept of being in need. I admit... neediness is not something to aspire to. This is why I prefer cats over dogs, because dogs are so needy and desperate for your love. But there are people in this world who, based on many things, have not been able to achieve much. For them, it's a bold concept to take some of the wealth of the richer people to help get them off their feet. The problem is obviously systemic, in that the outrageous costs of health care in America fuel the problem further. For the poor to get a fair shake, so much would have to change... like raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. But we all know, policies like this will never happen under the corporate state that is the USA.
So whether Bush III gets elected or the inspiring Obama... most of these core issues will remain problematic in America. But I think it's sad and ironic that the Religious Right in America get so upset about having to spread their own wealth to those less fortunate. You'd think it would be the other way around. Ironically... liberal Atheists have no problem with such a concept and they don't even believe in Jesus' ideas of altruism!!
Anyway... food for thought... for those who can afford to buy it.
5 comments:
Not enough room on facebook, and hey, you can just delete it here if I totally end up offending!
First, I can't speak for all republicans, and heck, I don't like EITHER candidate this time around, to me, McCain is just a less extreme democrat than Obama, so I'm going with what I'm considering the lesser of the two evils!
Speaking for myself, it's not that I don't want to care for the poor. But when the government is running the care for the poor, then it WILL be screwed up, and it will be done for the benefit of the politicians supposedly doing the "caring".
With government "aid" or "help" also comes government intrusion. We will give you this, but you need to think like we want you to, we want you to not say certain things, we want you to hire certain people, etc.
Speaking as a Christian, in the area in which I live, the churches are a BIG part in caring for the poor. The gathering in which I attend has taken on the most needy PUBLIC school in our town and has basically supplied the majority of their needs for the past two years. We also do it a lot better than the government. Actually, if the government had their way, they would rather we NOT be involved in helping because we ARE a church.
Which brings me to the part about Bush disregarding the Constitution. I'm not a Bush defender, his second 4 years were terrible.
BUT, the democrats are the party that wants to "re-write" our constitution. They consider it a "fluid" document, and NOT law.
Take "separation of church and state". Those words are NOT in our constitution. "..congress shall make NO law regarding the establishment of, or free excercise thereof"... in regards to religion. If they've made laws banning religion from public schools, then they've VIOLATED the constitution by making a law!
Religion was in public school until it was ordered out I think in the 50's, thanks to the atheists' lobbying. If the intent of the writers of the constitution were to banish it from schools, then as soon as that amendment was made it would have been banished.
In your blog you wrote: "For them, it's a bold concept to take some of the wealth of the richer people to help get them off their feet."
This thinking ignores the fact that taking from the rich to give to the poor is still stealing.
And you also wrote: "The problem is obviously systemic, in that the outrageous costs of health care in America fuel the problem further."
Here's a point I can speak to from direct experience. If you DON'T have health insurance in the U.S., you can get health care based on your income in each county's Health Department. If you make NO money, then you pay nothing.
Before I was out on my own, I was a liberal! Yes I was! I came from a fairly well off family, but when I went out on my own, I was truly on my own. When I saw the things happening in the working world, and with the social service system, I could see first hand how much in need of reform it was, even back in the 80's!
I had to use the Health Department myself. People just don't "like" to use it though. It's not glamorous. You have to wait for a long time if it's not directly life threatening (sound familiar?)and for me I just felt like a failure because I HAD to be there, so I worked harder to better my situation.
Did you know that it's a law that in emergency rooms a person CAN'T be turned away for treatment because they don't have insurance?
Now, I VERY rarely speak about anything to do with Canada because I don't live there so my perception would be just based on tv reports. But there is a husband/wife I know via the net in Canada who are saving to move to the U.S. (I met them via a car parts supplier, but it's a long story)
Anyway, they run a husband/wife dentist's practice. They said they got a letter from the Canadian government saying that by May they had already made all the money they were "allowed" to make! Allowed to make? What is that?! I don't think they would be shooting me BS, but I really have no way of knowing since i don't live there.
And on the general subject of socialism, even the definition of it defines it as a "transitional period between capitalism and communism". And if it ends up as communism, the only people who have money are the people IN the government.
Look at Chavez in venezuela, he is seizing and "nationalizing" whatever industry he can. They are on the brink of communism, and the people will most assuredly NOT be better off if it goes that way.
Obama's private citizen national security force will each be paid $1800 a month, given free healthcare, and money for tuition. Do you think they will be allowed to do so if they hold views in opposition to the establishment of Obama? It was also said that those who will come out of his "service" will be twice as likely to participate in organized demonstrations. Oh joy!
And I know that liberals tend to believe that republicans are the ones who try to suppress free speech, but the democrats do so by shielding it in supposed "compassionate" laws. Take hate crimes for instance. Physically attacking someone because they are different is just plain wrong and should be punished.
However, Obama has said, he wants to further include as hate crimes "words" as well as actions. If I were to say "I think homosexuality is a choice, or a result of upbringing climate", and a homosexual if offended, will I be in violation of the hate crimes law under the new regime? What about free speech?
When did we decide we have a "right" NOT to hear something that offends us?
The differences between our viewpoints are largely due to the fact that what each of us know is ALL we've ever known. I've grown up my whole life in a capitalistic society. (I didn't grow up in a Christian home however)
And you've always been in a society closer to socialism. (although I really don't know technically what you call it in Canada, as I don't really follow it in the news, it's probably NOT complete socialism because you're still for it!)
Oh and about those greedy republican 80's I grew up in, here's an interesting stat:
"The annual rate of giving in the 1980s was 55% higher than that of the prior 25 years. It increased from $77.5 billion in 1980 to $121 billion in 1989. The compounded growth rate, which was 3.3% from 1955-80, rose to 5.1% annually."
(that evil Reagan!)
Ok I could go on and on, but I've been long winded enough! Please feel free to delete if you want, it won't bother me a bit! I'm probably the toughest person to offend that I know!
If there is a better place like on Facebook to give a longer response to this I would like to do that, but this seems like a too-small place to have a debate about this, and I'd like to respond better than I can here.
I will respond to one thing that perhaps Republicans don't know. America is already a semi-socialist country. We do have welfare, we do have Social Security, we do have disability care, we do have Medicare and Medicaid and various other government funded forms of help for individuals. For corporations, the sky's the limit! We give massive, ginormous subsidies to companies like Exxon for no apparent reason, something the silly left likes to call "corporate welfare". Combine that with the massive bank bailouts and you got some serious Repblican socialism there. Or maybe it's totalitarianism, I don't know for sure what to label it. America has not seen such huge government welfare for corporations ever in our history.
As for the constitution, us liberals are trying hard to defend it, but it's hard when the ACLU is attacked viciously every day by right-wingers. The ACLU is all about our constitutionally-guaranteed civil rights, something that Republicans no longer acknowledge or respect. I know of no Democrat that believes the Constitution is "fluid" but I know plenty of Republicans who want to amend the constitution with all sorts of frivolous amendments like laws against gay marriage. And who pushed for more and more surveillance in this country, crushing our constitutional right to privacy in the Fourth Amendment -- Republicans. Republicans love surveillance. It makes them feel like they're a part of things.
The Democrats I know are trying their hardest to defend the Constitution and preserve our rights. That's why we are members of the ACLU and that's why so many Democrats and progressives and liberals are horrified at Bush's 1,000+ signing statements that overrrule the laws that Congress have made. That is a violation of his executive powers, which is uh, . . . . un-constitutional.
Religion has no place in government. If churches want to fund poor people, fine. But that's not the remedy. The remedy to poor people is to get them back on their feet with lots of good-paying jobs. Not church welfare.
At least 47 million Americans have no health care and they are dying from DUMB things because they can't afford preventative care. That's just retarded. We have a backwards health care system in the U.S. People die for no good reason, because can't afford medication, etc. The argument that states can or will pay for it is just silly. States are broke. They can handle emergency care and that's it. If diabetic is in the emergency room dying because they couldn't afford their insulin, I suppose that could be loosely defined as "health care" but not in my world.
That's all I feel I can put here. If there is another place to continue this, I could write a lot more, let me know.
One more quote answer:
"In your blog you wrote: "For them, it's a bold concept to take some of the wealth of the richer people to help get them off their feet."
This thinking ignores the fact that taking from the rich to give to the poor is still stealing. "
No, it's not stealing. Stealing is for the rich to take and take and take from a society and not give back what they can to the lesser-fortunate.
Every rich person in the U.S. is rich because the taxes everyone pays goes to develop an economic structure that allows the rich to become rich. Public schools, Pell grants for college, tax breaks for small businesses, etc. In other words, the rich in American got rich because of the contributions of millions who built a country within which they were *allowed* to be successful. Or else, they would have left and gone to Dubai, or somewhere else.
We have had a progressive tax system in the U.S. since Teddy Roosevelt. He was a Republican. Progressive taxation has been supported in this country for over 100 years in praticality and Thomas Jefferson and other guys back then also advocated for it. If the right-wing wants to call progressive taxation "socialism" then I guess they can but the claim has no credibility, since they were the first party to implement it.
That's all. : )
Not enough time tonight to respond fully, but I DO agree as did most of the U.S. that the corporate bailouts were a complete waste of money, and YES, I believe it was a huge socialism step, and yes we have had certain socialist programs over the years.
Bush pushed for the bailouts, his last 4 years I'm really not sure why the liberals didn't love him. I mean other than the Iraq war, he basically became a big spending liberal.
I voted today!
BTW, is this the Shelly that is Ian's girlfriend? If so, then hey, it's nice to finally "chat" with you, if not, then well it's still nice to chat with you.
Wish I had more internet time!
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