The Life of Julia

[MachineGhost]

Very creepy.

Take a look at how President Obama's policies help one woman over her lifetime -- and how Mitt Romney would change her story.

http://www.barackobama.com/life-of-julia

[MediumTex]

That's what you call a "nanny state" there.

Cradle to grave government services with the implicit assumption that people simply couldn't function without a huge government standing behind them and proppping them up at every stage of life.

[Lone Wolf]

Ugh!  "In case you're one of those people who is suspicious of the size and scope of government, please keep in mind that there are fictional cartoon characters named 'Julia' who can't find their asses with both hands and a candle unless Barack Obama personally helps them do so.  These people would fail in life at every opportunity without the patient intrusion guidance of Our Benevolent State."

And if you're going to make up a character for your creepy big government cartoon, is it smart to give her the same name as a character from 1984?

[Storm]

If you read through a lot of these - they are not "nanny state" entitlements.  They are mostly due to health care  reform, and other reforms that prevent injustice:

• Having surgery in her 20s be covered due to reform allowing her to stay on her parent's policy.
• Having access to birth control through her healthcare plan in her early career so she doesn't have to worry about getting pregnant.
• Entitled to equal pay due to the Lily Ledbetter act signed by Obama.
• Entitled to pregnancy screenings due to healthcare reform.

The list goes on.  It is also women focused, and it is fairly damning of the Republican platform against women.

You can't come out and say you're going to deny women access to birth control, equal pay, and healthcare and say you're pro-women.  The current crop of GOP politicians would be right at home in the Taliban:  Let's make them cover their ankles and wrists, wear prairie dresses, forced marriage at age 14, and they can never leave the house without being escorted by a husband or male relative.

[murphy_p_t]

Storm,
Thank you for sharing DNC talking points. Seriously.

For "Julia" and birth control...how many girls either
-can't keep her legs closed?
or
-can't afford $9 / month for birth control

Re: surgery in her 20s...how about growing up and getting a job? Saving money & live w/in your means? Hi deductible plans are really quite affordable.

Comparing the GOP to "the Taliban" is pathetic & deserves no response...you only discredit yourself by parroting such a ridiculous statement. This is a slanderous statement.

slan·der
? ?[slan-der]
noun
1.
defamation; calumny: rumors full of slander.
2.
a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report: a slander against his good name.

[Tyler]

Meh. There's a big difference between denying someone a service and asking them to pay their own bill.

[hoost]

You can't come out and say you're going to deny women access to birth control, equal pay, and healthcare and say you're pro-women. 

There's a big difference between denying someone access to something and forcing me to pay for those things at gunpoint.

People should be free to do what they want with their bodies as long as they're not endangering others, but they shouldn't expect me to pay for it.

[MediumTex]

The thing that bothered me was that the overall context of the ad suggested that it was a U.S. citizen's natural life experience to essentially rely on government assistance from cradle to grave. 

I always felt like the idea behind the U.S. in the first place was to have a life experience with as little government involvement as possible, whether it is in the form of coercion and confiscation of property or in the form of dependence and loss of self-reliance.

I thought that the ad made Julia look like a rat in a maze and without the assistance of the government she would never be able to make it out.

[Tyler]

I agree.  Honestly, it's ads like this that make me feel like politicians who spout these things truly live in their own little political bubble and are increasingly out of touch with the average voter.  Somewhere in Washington today, a staffer is shocked that such an ad showing the generous government involvement in every aspect of life is seeing any backlash at all.

[moda0306]

I don't like preachy videos like this (on any subject), but I see nothing wrong with government providing a social safety net, considering all the government also does to protect the wealth of the wealthy.  I wonder if libertarians actually realize all the massive benefits gov't bestows upon them by backing their private property... even property that is not inherantly private at all (land & natural resources).

Personal freedom is great, but to expect people with nothing to sell their labor to people who've been born into wealth, both earned and not, seems like a very skewed form of freedom to me.

This is one thing I've never found to be sufficiently analyzed by libertarians... how they can preach the pureness of liberty and the individual, but then assume that they can not only stake a claim on something that isn't theirs, but have the government reinforce that transaction through the threat of force, and then ask everyone else in the country/world to bartar with them for the productive assets they claimed as their own, with no social safety nets, taxes, regulations, etc.

I love certain aspects of libertarian/individualist philosophy and feel they definitely contribute to the debate (probably moreso than any other single political party/group)... I just find their philosophy inconsistent and fun to debate.  

[murphy_p_t]

Moda: "but then assume that they can not only stake a claim on something that isn't theirs, but have the government reinforce that transaction through the threat of force,"

Moda, I don't know what you refer to...can you provide some examples and/or expand on this?

[Tyler]

I've noticed that many Democrats and Republicans picture Libertarians as anarchists. Perhaps a small number of them are.  But by and large, I think most small-L Libertarians agree with Republicans on economic issues and Democrats on social issues.  They respect the rule of law and the power of government in protecting individual rights.  But they fundamentally believe in the freedom of people to live their own lives how they please as long as they do not harm others.  

I don't find that inconsistent at all nor particularly controversial.  But both major parties rely at some point on big-government, so I can see how they find it difficult to comprehend.  

[Lone Wolf]

A wonderful essay on this question of property vs. plunder is "The Law" by Frederic Bastiat: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

The main point underlying this essay is that "Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place."

[moda0306]

murphy,

Libertarianism, Austrianism, individualism, etc, is all based upon the idea that the individual is a sovereign entity and shouldn't be coerced by others.  This is something I love to think about because it makes so much sense.  Another pillar is their belief in private property, which on some levels seems completely natural.  If I fashion a violin or write a play or engineer a better widget, I should have ownership of that item.  However, I don't view the individual confiscation of vast swaths of land & natural resources to be natural in a moral sense.  It's natural in an instinctual sense for humans to do so, but land & resources have no legitimate, logical connection to an individual in any concrete way.

So while there are degrees of libertarianism, let's use Ron Paul's for a second:  The federal government should do barely anything... mainly maintain a small military.  I'm not sure on exactly what he bellieves the role of state/local governments to be, but I'd be willing to bet he's not voting to increase social services in his local community (though I could be wrong).

But for some reasont this belief that the government shouldn't allocate or reallocate wealth stops at land & natural resources, where vast swaths of both have literally been assigned to people by government over the years, and huge amounts of wealth have been built not on creativity, but simple resource grabs.  Now, entire populations are having to trade their services for the production of land that is deemed to be "owned" by someone else, or resources that are deemed to be "owned" by someone else, and the ownership is backed by several levels of government.  If the government quit recognizing land deeds, property values would plummet.


I'm not saying I'm against having land/resources be privately owned, but simply that it's a handout to certain people built into how we run our society.  It's a huge social engineering tool that gives people tools to be productive or have a piece of reliably stable shelter.  Many people don't have the priviledge of owning land, or, more importantly, coming from a family lineage that was fortunate enough to be given some of the earliest allocations of real property.  To ask them to surrender any & all benefits from various levels of government, but continue to protect the unearned wealth of others, seems like coercion by another name, and entirely unfair and a contrivance of the "preferred" government of some.

[moda0306]

LW,

I like that, and agree with starting with freedom and working in to what role of government is reasonable, not the other way around.  I think where I'd disagree is whether, and to what degree, land ownership and claiming natural resources as your own is "natural" vs a contrivance of government.  I think there's an argument that it is natural to a degree, but it gets real muddy real fast when you start asking what the natural land rights of people that happen accross bodies of land and resources truly are... wouldn't you say?  If we start from zero government, how does one think about that?

[MediumTex]

LW,

I like that, and agree with starting with freedom and working in to what role of government is reasonable, not the other way around.  I think where I'd disagree is whether, and to what degree, land ownership and claiming natural resources as your own is "natural" vs a contrivance of government.  I think there's an argument that it is natural to a degree, but it gets real muddy real fast when you start asking what the natural land rights of people that happen accross bodies of land and resources truly are... wouldn't you say?  If we start from zero government, how does one think about that?

I think that as a society develops, the group that is best able to organize and control the coercive elements in the society (i.e., the aggressive men and the available weapons) tend to be transformed into the government. 

Think about how tribal chiefs become tribal chiefs.  It's normally through either heredity, conquest or assassination.

[murphy_p_t]

Hi Moda. you write: "I don't view the individual confiscation of vast swaths of land & natural resources to be natural in a moral sense."

I'm still not familiar with any confiscation going on by individuals or private entities (other than theft & burglary). I have read about confiscation (through eminent domain and/or drug laws) of private property, including land.

You refer to property being handed down through families, but your statement above suggests that individuals are confiscating lands and natural resources today, without paying the owner for the same. I'm just not familiar with what you are referring to.

Can you point me to some specific examples / articles which document your concerns where this is occurring in the last 40 years?

[hoost]

LW,

I like that, and agree with starting with freedom and working in to what role of government is reasonable, not the other way around.  I think where I'd disagree is whether, and to what degree, land ownership and claiming natural resources as your own is "natural" vs a contrivance of government.  I think there's an argument that it is natural to a degree, but it gets real muddy real fast when you start asking what the natural land rights of people that happen accross bodies of land and resources truly are... wouldn't you say?  If we start from zero government, how does one think about that?

Who should own the resources?

[smurff]

Storm,
Thank you for sharing DNC talking points. Seriously.

For "Julia" and birth control...how many girls either
-can't keep her legs closed?
or
-can't afford $9 / month for birth control

Some "girls" legs are forced open by men who mean them harm, and birth control is useful if someone is attacked like that. I find it interesting that that the "keep the legs closed" crowd never seems to also consider that "open legs don't have to be entered" (or at least, "pants should be kept zippered").

Reliable birth control costs more than $9 per month if the person is unable to take generics.  (Unfortunately it takes trying them to know you can't take the generic.) Nine dollars may be a co-pay, but that presumes one is able to enroll in an insurance plan, which is not likely unless one earns a lot or is working for a major corporation that provides it as a benefit.  On a minimum wage job (lots of people, women and men, have those), there may not be an extra $9 per month, whether for co-pay or generic.

BTW, my comments here are not directed at the question of who pays--which I think is the main argument in this topic. 

Comparing the GOP to "the Taliban" is pathetic & deserves no response...you only discredit yourself by parroting such a ridiculous statement. This is a slanderous statement

Many observers have speculated about how and why the GOP allowed itself to be practically taken over by the kind of ideologues with plans reminiscent of hostile and authoritarian groups, the Taliban being one such group.  While not all Republicans share the sentiments of those ideologues, they don't seem to have much of an audible voice these days in the public sphere.  The term "Taliban" may upset many people post-9-11, but it gets the point across.  So Storm's comment is not slanderous; sad to say, it's on point.

BTW, Bob Altemeyer a researcher at the University of Manitoba, has done lots of research on authoritarian personalities and how they got that way, and how they handle the tasks of government.  You can read (actually, download) his book, "The Authoritarians," here:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

[murphy_p_t]

Storm,
Thank you for sharing DNC talking points. Seriously.

For "Julia" and birth control...how many girls either
-can't keep her legs closed?
or
-can't afford $9 / month for birth control

Some "girls" legs are forced open by men who mean them harm, and birth control is useful if someone is attacked like that. I find it interesting that that the "keep the legs closed" crowd never seems to also consider that "open legs don't have to be entered" (or at least, "pants should be kept zippered").

Ironically, ready availability of birth control makes rape more likely...the assailant won't have to pay child support to his victim....which means one less reason not to commit the crime.

Reliable birth control costs more than $9 per month if the person is unable to take generics.  (Unfortunately it takes trying them to know you can't take the generic.) Nine dollars may be a co-pay, but that presumes one is able to enroll in an insurance plan, which is not likely unless one earns a lot or is working for a major corporation that provides it as a benefit.  On a minimum wage job (lots of people, women and men, have those), there may not be an extra $9 per month, whether for co-pay or generic.

BTW, my comments here are not directed at the question of who pays--which I think is the main argument in this topic.   

Comparing the GOP to "the Taliban" is pathetic & deserves no response...you only discredit yourself by parroting such a ridiculous statement. This is a slanderous statement

Many observers have speculated about how and why the GOP allowed itself to be practically taken over by the kind of ideologues with plans reminiscent of hostile and authoritarian groups, the Taliban being one such group.  While not all Republicans share the sentiments of those ideologues, they don't seem to have much of an audible voice these days in the public sphere.  The term "Taliban" may upset many people post-9-11, but it gets the point across.  So Storm's comment is not slanderous; sad to say, it's on point.

using terms like authoritarian, Nazi, Taliban, Fascist, etc. to describe the largely unprincipled GOP...

The only point it gets across is that the accusers reveal that they will stoop to using baseless rhetoric....designed to appeal to a gullible audience. Those using these terms resort to name-calling once it is apparent to objective, reasonably informed observers that their arguments have little to zero merit.

[lazyboy]

Storm,
Thank you for sharing DNC talking points. Seriously.

For "Julia" and birth control...how many girls either
-can't keep her legs closed?
or
-can't afford $9 / month for birth control

Some "girls" legs are forced open by men who mean them harm, and birth control is useful if someone is attacked like that. I find it interesting that that the "keep the legs closed" crowd never seems to also consider that "open legs don't have to be entered" (or at least, "pants should be kept zippered").

Reliable birth control costs more than $9 per month if the person is unable to take generics.  (Unfortunately it takes trying them to know you can't take the generic.) Nine dollars may be a co-pay, but that presumes one is able to enroll in an insurance plan, which is not likely unless one earns a lot or is working for a major corporation that provides it as a benefit.  On a minimum wage job (lots of people, women and men, have those), there may not be an extra $9 per month, whether for co-pay or generic.

BTW, my comments here are not directed at the question of who pays--which I think is the main argument in this topic.  

Comparing the GOP to "the Taliban" is pathetic & deserves no response...you only discredit yourself by parroting such a ridiculous statement. This is a slanderous statement

Many observers have speculated about how and why the GOP allowed itself to be practically taken over by the kind of ideologues with plans reminiscent of hostile and authoritarian groups, the Taliban being one such group.  While not all Republicans share the sentiments of those ideologues, they don't seem to have much of an audible voice these days in the public sphere.  The term "Taliban" may upset many people post-9-11, but it gets the point across.  So Storm's comment is not slanderous; sad to say, it's on point.

BTW, Bob Altemeyer a researcher at the University of Manitoba, has done lots of research on authoritarian personalities and how they got that way, and how they handle the tasks of government.  You can read (actually, download) his book, "The Authoritarians," here:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

Thank you, smurff, your comments show courage and I think are totally on point. When we get beneath the surface of some of the idealogical taking points of the right, I see authoritarianism, intolerance. hatred and fear mongering revealing it's ugly face.

[MachineGhost]

the whole DNC talking points versus GOP talking points conflict, smacks of arguing about the taste of cat sh*t versus the taste of dog sh*t --- either side you end up eating sh*t..

both sides seem to have great luck advancing intrusive authoritarian policy's (and don't seem to mind, and certainly never correct the other sides authoritarian policy's when they gain control) while the people argue surface issues fired up by the things the media says and the way they say them. Anger at either side based on emotions triggered by buzz words and charged phrases need to be questioned, not because being angry at fascists or Marxists is wrong but because it could be blinding us to the bigger picture...

[hoost]

I wonder what their basis is for placing Ron Paul on the right.  I would expect him to be more toward the bottom.

[MachineGhost]

I wonder what their basis is for placing Ron Paul on the right.  I would expect him to be more toward the bottom.

[align=center]



[/align]

Of all the political maps I've seen over the years, I find this one to be the most accurate:

[center]

[MachineGhost]