In his column today, Paul Krugman asks, “How many Americans will be denied essential health care in the name of freedom?”
Specifically, the time-honored practice of attacking beneficiaries of government programs as undeserving malingerers doesn’t play the way it used to. When Ronald Reagan spoke about welfare queens driving Cadillacs, it resonated with many voters. When Mitt Romney was caught on tape sneering at the 47 percent, not so much.
There is, however, an alternative. From the enthusiastic reception American conservatives gave Friedrich Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom,†to Reagan, to the governors now standing in the way of Medicaid expansion, the U.S. right has sought to portray its position not as a matter of comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted, but as a courageous defense of freedom.
And this begs the question, how does the U.S. right define freedom?
When I speak of freedom in the political sense, I’m thinking of self-determination and the exercise of free will. But there’s nothing terribly “free” about sickness, chronic pain, untreated disability, or death. The sick and disabled find their life options limited. They may have self-determination in theory, but not in fact. Where’s the “freedom”?
Prairie Weather has it nailed:
Krugman points to that shocking moment, back at a presidential debate in 2011, when Ron Paul was asked whether people without insurance should be left to die, and a tea party contingent yelled “yeah!” The tea party was still interesting, often titillating, back then. All along their idea of freedom has been nothing more noble than freedom from moral responsibility.
But now we know more about the arrogance, their authoritarianism, their self-indulgent cruelty and we have decided that the tea party’s definition of freedom should be, well, left to die.
And this begs the question, how does the U.S. right define freedom?
It seems their definition of freedom is that they be free to amass everything, while being free to deny everything to everyone else. They want to be free from reality, free from fairness, free from knowledge, science, etc…………..
I think their “philosophical” table has five legs:
1. Stay out of my wallet, and my families bank account.
2. We don’t care what you do, as long as you’re a Conservative white male. And the wealthier you are, the less we care what you do. Do as you wish.
3. If you’re a woman, you need to remain subservient to your man. Do as you’re told, sit down, and STFU.
4. NO!!! You can’t do THAT in your bedroom!
5. That which creates the most problems for the most people, creates the most enjoyment and entertainment for me, and mine. Bonus points if it creates more problems for women, “Blah, and brown people.
It is a “philosophy” for sociopaths, and people who lean towards Nihilism, and Anarchy.
Saw something on PBS the other night that listed FDR’s Four Freedoms, which he described back when we were fightin’ the Hun:
* Freedom of speech
* Freedom of religion
* Freedom from want
* Freedom from fear
Oh, those were the days! I can’t think of any American politician who would own that list today.
It’s both amusing and pathetic to see all these righties defending tax cuts for the rich and demanding cuts in Medicare and food stamps, while they themselves can’t pay their own medical bills. It’s as John Steinbeck once said: In the U.S., the poor regard themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
This brings to mind something from Thomas Merton… He was talking about “peace” but it is just as applicable to other “noble words” used by the right to justify the orwellian opposite: “To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob others without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed upon those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.”
Arbeit Macht Frei…that’s not exactly how all righties view freedom, but there is a large percentage of them that hold that sentiment dear. The dedicated righties who have the solution for dealing with lazy liberal vermin.
Freedom: the absence of social responsibility.
So far as I can figure it out, freedom for wingnuts begins and ends in the pocketbook and holster.
Freedom means doing whatever you want to earn money (with exceptions for activities that offend wingnuts); spending your money on whatever you want (again, except for stuff that offends the right); not being taxed; and keeping as many guns as you want to defend your money/stuff from other folks.
Yes, Swami, and the ones who most loudly exclaim “Arbeit Macht Frei!” are usually the ones who have never really ‘arbeited’ a day in their lives.
Tea partier = vigilante.
I think a lot of it comes down to this simplistic notion that freedom is the opposite of government. Which in turn is based on the odd idea that government is somehow different in nature from any other human institution. So for instance Big Business and Big Religion can never affect anybody’s freedom because they aren’t government. I don’t know if all the people bitching about government bureaucrats running the healthcare system are even aware that it’s currently run by insurance company bureaucrats.
Joan16: right on. Maybe it’s time someone did.
Stephen Stralka: Also right on, even though, on average, government is more effective and less corrupt than the private sector because it is somewhat greater scrutiny.
Tired of the Thatcher eulogies. She was as poisonous as Reagan, and, like Reagan, will not be remembered in a positive light by historians.
Tired of the Thatcher eulogies. She was as poisonous as Reagan
No kidding. It’s like a bad production of Tom Sawyer, so much whitewash to cover a con job.
Joan,
Any second now, I’m waiting to hear that Revlon has a lipstick shortage.
The sick and disabled find their life options limited. They may have self-determination in theory, but not in fact.
Republicans are more concerned with the “freedom” of corporations to make profits off of people in desperate circumstances.
Where else but in the GOP does one derive the importance and self-righteousness typicallly accompanying a country club membership for the low cost of their affiliation? Sure, the large number of lower class rightees can bask in the same self-righteousness as the Koch brothers…never minding other minor differences. How could there be any gotchas? Prosperity is just around the corner.
If the people can’t democratically control things like the minimum wage, workplace safety, product safety, and a multitude of other key aspects of the economy though the government for the common good then the capitalists will control them and everything else about the economy for their own good.
The former is slavery.
The latter is freedom.
Ask any fiscal conservative or libertarian.
Clear, now?
Our right wing, showing how much they love the Intertubes and the TWITsphere – claiming the North Korea is still dangerous, because, ‘Look what they did to Pearl Harbor!”
I sh*t thee not:
http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/post/47223447644/remember-what-north-korea-did-to-the-u-s-at-pearl#_=_
And here I thought it was the Germans, all this time.
Another good one, Rand Paul went to Howard University, and talked to the college students there ‘like they was ignant pickaninnies!’
Did you know that the Republican Party was the party of Civil Rights, and still is?
And that ‘he has never wavered in his support for civil rights or the civil rights act.’
Yeah, me neither.
And, neither did the students.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/rand-paul-pretends-he-favored-civil-rights-act.html
Rand, what you did was the equivalent of getting up at ‘Veganism In Internet Age’ conference, and claiming that neither you nor anyone in your family has ever eaten meat, and that you fully support veganism – when all anyone had to do, was search for a second to find evidence of you wolfing down a medium-rare cheeseburger, while your dad ate a rare porterhouse, at the ‘Meatlovers For the Paul Family Fundraiser’ last week.
OY!
“TEH STOOOOOPID ‘N LION” – IT HERTZ!!!