The opposite of government is not freedom. It is anarchy. Is Somalia free?
Wrong!
And, that's a very false argument and the wrong argument.
And, why do you need to use the worst case scenario to try to make your argument? Aren't you capable of making a decent and sound and factually correct argument?
The opposite of government is no government. Anarchy almost always leads to some form of government as soon as the "anarchists" (the people) realize that a society without rules gets them nowhere and is in reality, counterproductive. But, even in Somalia, your example, there is some form or government, even if it's of the most undesirable kind.
Now, you are bringing up a false question with your "government versus anarchy". You're setting up a false scenario and a strawman argument.
The question is more about "big government" and "small government". As far as I know, no one has argued for "no government", not the republicans and not the conservatives and not the libertarians. So, why bring up the false argument and frankly, a stupid one at that.
Republicans and conservatives believe that small government is best for the country and the people and for our freedoms. Our freedoms get trampled on by each new government program enacted. The bigger the government, the less the people have control of their own lives.
As it is, a lot of those big government programs are actually in violation of the constitution. Nowhere in the constitution does it say anything about government having the power to pass laws for health care or for social security or for housing or for education or for anything that wasn't specifically designated as a power of the national government. If any of those programs were deemed necessary, then those programs should have been passed at the local level, mostly at the state level. The 10th amendment to the constitution says that any power not "specifically" delegated to the federal government by the constitution belongs with the states or the people. But, even at the local level, no government has the right to institute programs which necessitate taking power or freedoms away from the people. Big government can be as intrusive at the national and the local levels.
As for the "right" to health care. Yeah, the people do have to right to health care. But, having that right doesn't mean that the government has to intervene in order to get them that benefit. All that the government is needed for is to regulate and to make sure that the benefit is available to all, but it should not mandate that the people be "forced" to have it. People should be allowed to make their own choices, even if those choices end up costing them dearly, both in the pocketbooks or in the quality of their health.
What YOU and the democrats are about is about presenting the false choices and the scaremongering. You and the democrats accuse the "opposition" of not caring and scaring the people. But, it is YOU and the democrats who can't get anything passed or done unless you use the scare tactics.
The right is still there for the people. People have the right to choose how much insurance they need and some people even choose not to have insurance even though they can afford it. Obama came out the other day and mentioned that some 30 million people are without insurance. That figure is way below the 47 million (17million being mostly the illegal aliens) that the democrats used for the last 10 years in order to scare the people about how "dire" the situation is. Now, even the 30 million is way overstated when you also take away the number of people who can afford to purchase their own insurance but choose not to do so. In fact, there are reports that say that the real number of people who are in need of coverage and can't afford it, is somewhere between 5 and 10 million. So, should the government try to take over the whole health care system for a comparatively small number? If anything is needed for helping the small number of people without health care, then perhaps some sort of government assistance might be preferable; but certainly taking over the whole health care system is not warranted.
In summary, what YOU do and what the democrats do is to use scare tactics and false argument in order to try to sway public opinion. or at least to justify any single-sided decisions they make. As it stands, the majority of people, according to the polls, don't want what the democrats and Obama have proposed thus far, and in reality, according to the polls, again, they don't want the government to run their health care system at all. So, it sounds to me like it is YOU and the democrats who are out of step with the American people. Take a few steps back and listen to what the American people are actually saying. And, please don't come up with the arguments that the American people aren't informed enough or that they are somehow misguided. That kind of argument is mostly reserved for governments that will try to justify or rationalize what they want to do regardless of how the people feel. That kind of government is dictatorial and frankly, not preferable to anarchy since anarchy often leads to a new beginning.
Health care is a right. Health care is a choice.
Between the die-hard advocates and die-hard opponents of health reform these are the key takeaways. These are their arguments boiled down to their essence.
(Shown, from Wikipedia, is the branch plaque of the U.S. Army Medical Corps, featuring a caduceus, the ancient medical staff of Greek antiquity.)
Liberals like the late Sen. Ted Kennedy argued passionately that health care is a right, that in the richest nation on Earth no one should be made to watch their child die of cancer because they can’t afford a cure.
Conservatives argue just as passionately that health care is a personal choice, a market choice. You can see these arguments, at their most eloquent, below Heather Clancy’s piece yesterday on health care as a corporate responsibility.
Which side is the more radical?
The most ancient text we have on medicine may be the Hippocratic Oath. This is part of a modern version written by Louis Lasagna of Tufts in 1964:
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
A doctor’s loyalty, in other words, is not to the market, and not to himself. It is to the patient. A doctor is called by ethics to treat the sick. Treat first and ask about money second.
It’s a bit like the Internet’s ethic to move the “precious bodily fluids” of bits first and then look into payment.
Without that ethic of act first, pay later, this medium could not exist. I am old enough to remember the 1980s, when this ethic did not apply.
The online world at that time was an elite activity for a tiny portion of the whole market. Now everyone depends on it, because of an economic model based first on service, and then on payment.
Medicine is the same way.
We know how to bend the cost curve in health care. Give doctors the power to enforce wellness guidelines. Monitor people while they are well. Don’t get fat, don’t smoke, exercise, drink moderately. Coaching you up to take better care of yourself wins the health care game.
This requires that the government change market incentives, as it did with the Internet. We need more primary care, not just doctors but nurses, Physicians Assistants and health coaches. These coaches need data the way football coaches need game film. And everyone has to be a player in their own health game.
It’s like the “fourth freedom” of open source, a responsibility to share your code improvements with the community. This is a very controversial freedom. My open source blog is often filled with angry talkbacks asking whether this represents more freedom or less.
All the health reform plans out there — whether the Baucus plan, that of the Senate HELP committee, or the two House plans — focus on increasing access to care, based on the idea that care is a right society must be responsible for.
In this it is much like the Internet or the GPL. It follows the Hippocratic Oath. And it follows the model of every other industrial country, where costs are lower and lives longer because everyone is in the pool.
So which side in this debate is the radical one? I would argue that it’s those who call health care a choice, a matter solely of personal responsibility, something government should stay out of.
They’re telling doctors they must violate their oath and let the poor die. They’re telling those who use the Internet that our economic models are socialist. They’re telling us we can have rights without having responsibilities to one another, and that anarchy is freedom.
The opposite of government is not freedom. It is anarchy. Is Somalia free?
