Monthly Archives: March 2010

A Mild-Mannered White Guy Tells the Facebook Community What’s What

A response to the argument that the health care bill represents a historically unique curtailment of our civil rights, and is therefore incompatible with a progressive worldview.

Facebook User:

But what of the left? We too have our demons to confront as regards the health care bill. The argument against the bill that I am most sensitive to is the one regarding individual freedoms and civil liberties. The left has a proud tradition of defending individual rights, whether of homosexuals, minorities, or even those of the alleged terrorists in Guantanamo Bay. We should all take seriously, then, the accusation that the new health care bill is abridging American rights, and the more so since there IS something different about this bill. There are, of course, many laws that forbid behavior: it is illegal to steal, murder, slander, abuse children, misrepresent oneself in business dealings, etc. Similarly, there are thousands of laws that regulate voluntary behavior. If you drive, you must wear a seat belt and obey the speed limit, or you will be punished. If you advertise, you must follow certain guidelines designed to protect consumers from false claims regarding your product. The new law, however, is different. It legislates a particular behavior that all Americans must perform, and punishes them if they do not perform it. There are very few laws of this type in America. One that comes immediately to mind is the draft: if you are of a certain age and your name is called, then you must serve in the military. Liberals, however, can hardly take comfort from this precedent, since many on the left have long been opposed to the draft. Moreover, the draft is much more limited in scope than the current bill. Mandatory education for children under sixteen is similar, but on the other hand, children have never had the same rights as adults in the United States. It seems to me, then, that the new bill is unique in that rather than regulating voluntary behavior or forbidding certain behaviors, it forces a particular behavior upon all adult US citizens. This truly does seem to be without precedent.

Mild Mannered White Guy:

@XXXX – An interesting point. One frustrating thing about American politics is our tendency to root for our “team” even in the face of overwhelming ideological dissonance.


However, in this particular case, I think you’ve missed the mark on a couple points. The mechanism of the health care bill – requiring a certain behavior of its citizens – does not find its closest precedent in the draft (as you suggest), but rather in Social Security and Medicare. These programs may appear to be taxes, but in principle are *mandatory insurance* against destitution in old age.


Due to the political unfeasibility of instituting a single-payer system, as well as the recent defeat of the public option, mandatory health insurance must be purchased from private companies instead of the government. But fundamentally it’s a similar approach. And I think you’ll find a long history of support on the left for both of those programs.


And this taps into a larger progressive worldview. In general we (and I’ll happily stand up and self-identify as a progressive here) believe that the “losers” in society – the poor, the sick, the weak – bear a disproportionate amount of the cost of progress without receiving a fair benefit. For example -


1) Everybody gets sick because of pollution, but only factory owners and the investor class profit from it. So we tax polluters, require them to install expensive technology to reduce their impact, and mandate that they pay for programs to clean up their mess in the community.


2) Those who work service jobs are indispensable to our economy. Often their jobs are unpleasant, unstable, and demand the most hours of any. And yet they are exposed to poverty, unemployment and disease at a disproportionate rate. So we allow them to unionize to negotiate a fair deal, and we build them a safety net to keep them out of poverty.


The fundamental progressive position is that the “winners” who have benefited so much from the country we all contribute to (try listing all the tax dollars that are invested in a professional who went to a public college, owns a house, invests in stocks, and maybe collected some unemployment after the dot-com boom) have a *moral responsibility* to bear more of the general costs of maintaining a functioning society than the market alone demands, and to maintain a minimum “safety net” standard of living for all.


You also imply that the military draft is somehow incompatible with the progressive value system. And it’s true that many of us have been vehemently opposed to the wars in which drafts were implemented.


However –


Remember that it was Charlie Rangel (with the support of plenty of bloggers on DailyKos) who introduced a bill reinstating the draft in 2003, based on the logic that the wealthy were the ones who wanted to go to war so badly because they would profit from it, and they knew their kids wouldn’t be the ones who got killed.


That was a particularly radical proposal (and not one I necessarily supported), but it definitely came from the left as opposed to the right. By that standard, mandating health insurance and providing subsidies to help those who can’t afford it seems downright…


Moderate?

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