Leighton left an interesting comment on Irving Kristol's take on social justice in my last post. I started to leave a followup comment but realized I might want it as a post.
I am really torn here, thinking about the sense that the GOP seems to approach this issue of healthcare in a very callous sense. A friend (actually, a jerk I used to know) from Facebook was direct--he said we couldn't afford to help those without health insurance. I know too many Republicans who are good people, who are concerned about their world around them, and those who are in need. But why is it that the party at large appears to be so apathetic to those needs? And further that the aforementioned Republicans with compassion still fall behind those GOP leaders? Saying that we "can't afford" helping them in a world where even with a recession so many of us live very well--well, it sounds hollow, and very far from the supposed model of Christian compassion.
Is this an issue of authoritarianism? Or something more simple?
Speaking to a conservative friend today, he noted that he didn't think that healthcare was a "right." I understand (sort of) but wonder how that compares to those ideals enshrined in the Declaration--and, I might add, so often noted by the very same conservatives as some kind of American Scripture?
I guess I am full of questions tonight.
One more thing about the healthcare issue. My friend said it wasn't a right, or that many conservatives didn't see it as a right, but a privilege. But even those conservatives tacitly approve of hospitals and clinics serving the destitute and the homeless if they collapse on a public sidewalk. Someone pays for that, just as someone pays for the middle class family forced into bankruptcy by healthcare costs. Do conservatives somehow think they don't pay for that?
Why do we say that someone in need of life-saving care can be attended to, but that same person cannot be assisted, or subsidized in getting preventative care (which is ten times--at least--more efficient than emergency care). This sounds more like a punitive approach which suggests that conservatives believe that those without insurance deserve their fate. And even though it costs them (the conservative) more to care for those in emergency care, they will not help those who have not deserved it. A friend of mine as much said that--that he didn't want to help those who were too lazy to work for their insurance. The Good Samaritan comes to mind as a counter story, but then again, I am unsure where American Christians incorporated the idea that people need to earn their right to life.
Needless to say, I am confused (and tired tonight). I don't understand where Christianity fits into this punitive style of conservatism. I don't understand why any pragmatic or fiscally responsible conservative would choose paying for emergency care when preventative care is better for everyone.
I don't understand much right now.
4 comments:
To be "fair" to Kristol (actually, I think this makes it worse), his argument came in two incompatible packages. People who aren't immediately being oppressed have no grounds to complain because they're personally fine. But people who are being oppressed have no grounds to complain because they're emotional rather than sober (the 1960s Republican-speak counterpart to today's "serious," as in, people who thought invading Iraq was a Bad Idea in 2003 were right for the wrong reasons because they weren't "serious"), and can't see the big picture of all the hard choices that Washington policy-makers have to deal with.
I haven't studied much on the last few decades, so I'm still trying to figure out whether this crap is still around in basically its original form because:
(A) too many liberals and others who opposed neoconservatism abandoned political action en masse in the wake of Vietnam,
(B) the current media has less consciousness of history than a mayfly,
(C) the media even back then never did give much of a s**t except for a few counterexamples who are disproportionately represented in historical accounts of those days,
or some or all of them, or other factors I'm not aware of. Any thoughts?
I am wondering how many people knew about Kristol, or understood that kind of conservatism. This sounds a lot like the Ayn Rand stuff, right? I have never read her, but the stuff I have suggests this kind of disconnect from others and a focus on self. That kind of suggests that certainly B) and C) are probably right on target. I wonder a bit if the media in the 60s didn't really assess conservatism, because it was still not the political force it would be. But that is a good question.
Your clarification on Kristol is really chilling--and I am reminded of those Americans who cannot be bothered to care about Iraq or Afghanistan or torture because it doesn't personally touch them.
Half of the argument is like Ayn Rand, at least the selfishness part. But her stuff, at least what I could stomach reading, is more about fantasies of self-sufficient individualism that I think I got over by the time I was six or so. Neoconservatism as embodied by (say) the Kristols seems more collective, a little more canny and a lot more coordinated. I get the sense that they'll gladly use Objectivist and libertarian arguments to serve their ends, but they don't actually hold them as principles. They seem to take a page out of Strauss and keep their goals and guiding "morals" (if you can call them that) close to the vest; lying to achieve political ends--above and beyond the accepted levels of spin--seems to be A-O-K for them.
You're probably right that not many people really noticed Irving Kristol, at least apart from "crazy" leftists like Chomsky. It could be that Fox News has made enough ripples that political analysts have recently realized it's important to put this kind of stuff under the microscope. I guess I just don't have a good sense of how (or whether) message analysis was done prior to the internet and blogs. It's what I grew up with, and I don't know anything else.
Collective responsibility seems to be a relatively new development. I get discouraged about people passing the buck on Afghanistan and Iraq too, but then I remember that my mom was 15 when the federal government forced Southern states to allow non-whites to vote. And then I'm not sure whether to be comforted or even more discouraged.
Oh, hey, he was borrowing from Strauss. Different truths for different people, riiiiiiight. Gotta love how thoroughly contemporary Republican politicians seem to have adopted this view.
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