The Loyal Opposition

[BigV]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

I found this to be a good read.

I found *this* to be a similarly good read.

All world views are not inherently equal. Conservative thinking is, by definition, bent on conserving the status quo. It is often regressive. A shrinking, a backward movement, a return to previous points in cultural, political, and intellectual development.

The fact that humanities departments are exceptionally lacking in conservatives and dogmatically religious people highlights this reality. Psychology, poetry, sociology, political science. People who have wrestled with the human condition, the human soul, literature and art, are the least likely to give credence to backwards ideas that are diminishing to human value and human dignity.

[henry quirk]

"Conservative thinking is, by definition, bent on conserving the status quo. It is often regressive. A shrinking, a backward movement, a return to previous points in cultural, political, and intellectual development."

Which is not the worst idea when 'progress' takes you down untenable roads or to repugnant places. Backing up when you've reached a dead end is sensible, yes?

[Beest]

Originally Posted by henry quirk

"Conservative thinking is, by definition, bent on conserving the status quo. It is often regressive. A shrinking, a backward movement, a return to previous points in cultural, political, and intellectual development."

Which is not the worst idea when 'progress' takes you down untenable roads or to repugnant places. Backing up when you've reached a dead end is sensible, yes?

If you're intent is to back up, then to set off in a new direction in search of a better avenue of progress then yes, if you are writing off progress as a failure, and just receding a halt, then maybe not.

IMHO

[henry quirk]

Sometimes there's no 'new direction' or 'better avenue'. Sometimes makin' do with what you got is the best thing to do.

Let's take the ACA as example...

I guess I'm in the minority here, but my health care (when and why I go to the doctor, how often I go, how I pay for it) is my business and no one else's.

All I want from government is final arbitration (not first, not intermediary, final) in disputes between me and the doc (or insurer or hospital), and I want congress (along with cleanly and wholly repealing the ACA) to make it so if I, livin' in LA., find an insurer in Alaska offering what I want, for the price I want, I can transact with that insurer.

Beyond that, the government should be (as it should be on a great many things) silent and neutral.

Repeal, and do not replace (do not seek a 'new direction' or 'better avenue'...just back up).

Instead: we're gonna end up with what we have (or a tweaked, and still crappy, version of it).

Progress, sometimes, ain't.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Henry, I guess this applies to you.

[Beest]

If you believe that what you have is the best that can be, the top of the curve, then travelling in any direction is going to be downhill.

The ideal system that you desire, is not what is and not what was, so you wish to progress to that state of being.

[henry quirk]

What I suggest, to me, isn't progress...it's deregulation.

I make no claim what I suggest is 'better', only that I prefer it.

I have no doubt many of those folks I saw (and heard) in footage from town halls ("without the affordable care act I'd be dead!" "without obamacare my >insert loved one< would be dead!" "without the ACA I [or my >insert loved one<] can't afford life-saving/-enhancing medicine/treatment!") would be truly in the shitter if what I suggest came to pass.

Here's the thing: each and every one of these folks operates out of self-interest, just like me. Explain why I must set aside my priorities in favor of theirs?

Unlike many of the 'hillbillies' in Bruce's piece, I'm not on the dole, am not subsidized, am not beholden (which is to say: I'm not a hypocrite).

I put more in than I take out, I ask for nuthin' except decent roads to drive on and to able to transact with others without jumpin' through hoops. Instead, I have crap roads (which I pay for) and grief tryin' to simply get what I want (my nice little catastrophic insurance, the one declared sub-standard by the ACA).

No, I'm not after 'progress'...I want a retreat from it (the philosophy of it).

[xoxoxoBruce]

So you don't believe, "There, but for the grace of god, go I".
Fuck those Hillwilliams and poor folk who's sweat dug the coal and picked the cotton to make the economy flourish and your life better.
Fair enough, that's your privilege. But I consider it an Ayn Rand selfishness I can't agree with.
My college apartment mate and best friend at the time, worshiped Rand, Atlas Shrugged was his bible, and we had many long arguments about it. The funny thing is it was my money that allowed him to not have to live in the dorm.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by henry quirk

I put more in than I take out, I ask for nuthin' except decent roads to drive on and to able to transact with others without jumpin' through hoops.

What makes you think that less regulation would decrease the number of hoops you have to jump through? Many regulations are big hoops upstream that eliminate many small hoops that people downstream would otherwise have to jump.

And everybody is downstream of more things than they are upstream on, even people who are at the head of their particular stream.

Heck, on food alone, the number of hours saved by the average person not having to research every vendor and their supply chain (even if they had the authority to demand the information needed for that research) offsets a good portion of their tax liability.

It's easy to think how nice it would be if there was no regulation on the things I do; it's harder to take into account having to deal with all the other unregulated assholes.