Why exactly are you unwilling to pay for other people's medical care?

[dblack]

To me American Exceptionalism can be distilled down to "We don't need no stinkin'..." [fill in the blank].

Certain segments of American society believe that our way is the only way and refuse to even study other countries' ways of doing things...not to mimic them, but to take the good things about them and adapt them to the American way of life.

But, no. We can't have Nice Things. We're Americans, dammit!

Another term for that is "self-defeating pigheadedness," IMO.

That's one way to look at it. You might also acknowledge that people simply have different ideas about what Nice Things means. One of the benefits of being a nation built on waves of immigrants is that it forced us to face that fact regularly and, perhaps even by necessity, learn to accommodate it.

 

[Arianrhod]

To me American Exceptionalism can be distilled down to "We don't need no stinkin'..." [fill in the blank].

Certain segments of American society believe that our way is the only way and refuse to even study other countries' ways of doing things...not to mimic them, but to take the good things about them and adapt them to the American way of life.

But, no. We can't have Nice Things. We're Americans, dammit!

Another term for that is "self-defeating pigheadedness," IMO.

That's one way to look at it. You might also acknowledge that people simply have different ideas about what Nice Things means. One of the benefits of being a nation built on waves of immigrants is that it forced us to face that fact regularly and, perhaps even by necessity, learn to accommodate it.

Something else you and I can agree on. But those who evoke American Exceptionalism tend to be of the Donald Trump "Let's build a Great Big Wall and keep everyone who doesn't look like us and speak English out." They tend to have a sketchy idea of history at best.

They also seem to think that rights are a commodity - that, for example, if one group of people is granted equal rights (minorities, gays, trans people) it means the majority group will have some rights taken away from them.

Look at the whole thing around Kim Davis, or the "I refuse to bake you a gay cake" nonsense.

 

[Freiheit]

Right now there is someone who requires immediate medical care. That care will only be provided for payment. That someone has no money to pay it. You do. Are you not morally obligated to ensure that they receive the care they need?

Tell me exactly why you think I am obligated to provide payment. If you feel such an obligation I understand and support your choice, why does you obligation include me or anyone else?

 

[Conservative65]

Right now there is someone who requires immediate medical care. That care will only be provided for payment. That someone has no money to pay it. You do. Are you not morally obligated to ensure that they receive the care they need?

That's easy. YOU write a check. If you can't, don't demand someone else do it.

 

[Conservative65]

Right now there is someone who requires immediate medical care. That care will only be provided for payment. That someone has no money to pay it. You do. Are you not morally obligated to ensure that they receive the care they need?

Tell me exactly why you think I am obligated to provide payment. If you feel such an obligation I understand and support your choice, why does you obligation include me or anyone else?

The challenge I make to people like Pedro who ask those types of question is for them to write a check. I've found that many will say they would IF they could meaning they can't but expect someone else to do it so they can feel good for thinking about it.

 

[Soupnazi630]

Right now there is someone who requires immediate medical care. That care will only be provided for payment. That someone has no money to pay it. You do. Are you not morally obligated to ensure that they receive the care they need?

No.

No one is morally obligated to another for anything

 

[Arianrhod]

Every human society, even atheism, has some form of the Golden Rule...except the Internet.

Even Asimov's Robot Laws cover moral behavior...for non-human intelligent life.

But the Mighty Keyboard Warriors don't need no stinkin' morality...until they come up against a problem they can't handle themselves, like the S.C. legislators who vetoed aid to states hit by Hurricane Sandy, but have tears in their eyes and their hands out after the flooding.

Morality or hypocrisy. Can any of you "not me, go fuck yourself" types tell me there's a third choice?

 

[dblack]

Every human society, even atheism, has some form of the Golden Rule...except the Internet.

Even Asimov's Robot Laws cover moral behavior...for non-human intelligent life.

But the Mighty Keyboard Warriors don't need no stinkin' morality...until they come up against a problem they can't handle themselves, like the S.C. legislators who vetoed aid to states hit by Hurricane Sandy, but have tears in their eyes and their hands out after the flooding.

Morality or hypocrisy. Can any of you "not me, go fuck yourself" types tell me there's a third choice?

I suspect that if you took government out of the question, you'd get different reactions. And get closer to the truth regarding the morality question. My problem with threads like this, at least on a politics board, is that they usually make the assumption that opposition to government programs that force the issue is the same thing as rejection of the moral obligation. And it's not.

 

[Arianrhod]

Every human society, even atheism, has some form of the Golden Rule...except the Internet.

Even Asimov's Robot Laws cover moral behavior...for non-human intelligent life.

But the Mighty Keyboard Warriors don't need no stinkin' morality...until they come up against a problem they can't handle themselves, like the S.C. legislators who vetoed aid to states hit by Hurricane Sandy, but have tears in their eyes and their hands out after the flooding.

Morality or hypocrisy. Can any of you "not me, go fuck yourself" types tell me there's a third choice?

I suspect that if you took government out of the question, you'd get different reactions. And get closer to the truth regarding the morality question. My problem with threads like this, at least on a politics board, is that they usually make the assumption that opposition to government programs that force the issue, is the same thing as rejection of the moral obligation. And it's not.

True, there's this mythology among the people with a death-grip on their wallets that Gubmint Bad (unless it's kicking ass in the Middle East or building a wall along the entire southern border) and possibly run by aliens (the ET kind) if not Secret Muslims that "If government would just get out of the way, charities would pick up the slack."

They, of course, would not be contributing to those charities. That's for some other poor sucker to do.

 

[LOki]

Every human society, even atheism, has some form of the Golden Rule...except the Internet.

Even Asimov's Robot Laws cover moral behavior...for non-human intelligent life.

But the Mighty Keyboard Warriors don't need no stinkin' morality...until they come up against a problem they can't handle themselves, like the S.C. legislators who vetoed aid to states hit by Hurricane Sandy, but have tears in their eyes and their hands out after the flooding.

Morality or hypocrisy. Can any of you "not me, go fuck yourself" types tell me there's a third choice?

 

[Arianrhod]

It's amazing to me how many of you don't realize how much you paid for other people's healthcare before the PPACA.

 

[Cecilie1200]

To me American Exceptionalism can be distilled down to "We don't need no stinkin'..." [fill in the blank].

Certain segments of American society believe that our way is the only way and refuse to even study other countries' ways of doing things...not to mimic them, but to take the good things about them and adapt them to the American way of life.

But, no. We can't have Nice Things. We're Americans, dammit!

Another term for that is "self-defeating pigheadedness," IMO.

No, Chuckles, Americans are famously willing to mug other cultures and rifle their pockets for loose ideas. The problem is that not everyone agrees on what constitutes "nice things". Contrary to your obvious belief, we do not all think other cultures are spiffy and superior and simply object to them because they're "furriners". We actually just don't like their cultures, and feel that if we wanted to live in those cultures, we would move there.

I read an article on this very subject the other day, and thought it made some apropos points, to the effect that transplanting one nation's programs and systems onto another is often futile if the receiving nation doesn't have the cultural background that goes with it.

Denmark is on the mind of Francis Fukuyama, whose Political Order and Political Decay has now been issued in paperback, to the delight of cheapskate readers everywhere. Fukuyama, borrowing from a group of developmental economists, introduces his readers to the phrase “isomorphic mimicry,” by which he means the error that poor and developing countries make when they adopt the formal institutions of the developed world in the absence of the underlying values, habits, and culture that make those institutions effective. This is part of the problem he calls — surprise — “getting to Denmark.” Fukuyama: The problem is that Denmark did not get to be Denmark in a matter of months or years. Contemporary Denmark — and all other developed countries — gradually evolved modern institutions over the course of centuries. If outside powers try to impose their own models of good institutions on a country, they are likely to produce what Lant Pritchett, Michael Woolcock, and Matt Andrews call “isomorphic mimicry”: a copying of the outward forms of Western institutions but without their substance.

Aping the superficial attractive forms of alien polities is not an error limited to the poor and the backward. Our progressive friends argued that Obamacare is just like the Swiss health-care system, which is generally quite highly regarded, and it is, with one important difference: Switzerland is full of Swiss people and the United States is not. The Swiss health-care system turns out to be poorly suited for a country that isn’t Swiss. Any bets on how well the Danish welfare state is going to play in Mississippi and New Jersey?

Read more at: Democratic Debate & Bernie Sanders -- Denmark's Example Isn't What He Thinks It is | National Review Online

 

[Cecilie1200]

To me American Exceptionalism can be distilled down to "We don't need no stinkin'..." [fill in the blank].

Certain segments of American society believe that our way is the only way and refuse to even study other countries' ways of doing things...not to mimic them, but to take the good things about them and adapt them to the American way of life.

But, no. We can't have Nice Things. We're Americans, dammit!

Another term for that is "self-defeating pigheadedness," IMO.

That's one way to look at it. You might also acknowledge that people simply have different ideas about what Nice Things means. One of the benefits of being a nation built on waves of immigrants is that it forced us to face that fact regularly and, perhaps even by necessity, learn to accommodate it.

Something else you and I can agree on. But those who evoke American Exceptionalism tend to be of the Donald Trump "Let's build a Great Big Wall and keep everyone who doesn't look like us and speak English out." They tend to have a sketchy idea of history at best.

I realize that anything outside of the most childish "All or nothing" comprehension is nigh-on impossible for leftists, but DO try to grasp the difference between "people who come here illegally" and "anyone who doesn't look like us". It's not really all THAT nuanced a distinction. Even you should be able to wrap your two functioning brain cells around it.

They also seem to think that rights are a commodity - that, for example, if one group of people is granted equal rights (minorities, gays, trans people) it means the majority group will have some rights taken away from them.

Look at the whole thing around Kim Davis, or the "I refuse to bake you a gay cake" nonsense.

And again you display to us how egregiously proud of being a close-minded bigot you truly are. God forbid you ever so much as listen to what other people think, let alone make any effort to understand them. It's so much easier to just demonize them and fling ideological shit at them like a monkey in a zoo, isn't it?

Calling something a "right" doesn't mean it really is. So yes, defining the word "right" as "the way I want the world to be" does, in fact, have the net result of denying TRUE rights to those you don't like (which, of course, was the actual point of the whole exercise, and please don't think we're as dumb and shortsighted as you and can't recognize that).

 

[Flopper]

Back to the topic, I'm not unwilling to pay for other people's health care. I unwilling to support laws that force others to do so.

That is what insurance is all about. You are always paying for other peoples healthcare. However, I know that's what you mean.

The healthcare that others receive or don't receive in your community effects you in indirect ways but it does effects you. More healthy communities are more productive and happier.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Every human society, even atheism, has some form of the Golden Rule...except the Internet.

Even Asimov's Robot Laws cover moral behavior...for non-human intelligent life.

But the Mighty Keyboard Warriors don't need no stinkin' morality...until they come up against a problem they can't handle themselves, like the S.C. legislators who vetoed aid to states hit by Hurricane Sandy, but have tears in their eyes and their hands out after the flooding.

Morality or hypocrisy. Can any of you "not me, go fuck yourself" types tell me there's a third choice?

Do you understand that the Golden Rule is "Do unto others" not "We will make you do unto others"? It's an instruction to behave a certain way, not a guarantee of being forced to behave that way.

Leftists love to parrot, "You can't legislate morality", but never seem to understand that that applies to THEIR morality, too.

Speaking of hypocrisy, your posts are just rife with it, considering all this preaching about, "You need to be moral and exactly match MY PERSONAL STANDARD of how good people should be!" when there's not one single snowball's chance in Hell that you would EVER tolerate that exact same attitude from anyone on the right.

It is my very great pleasure to remind you yet again that you are nobody's moral standard, nor are anyone that people give a tin shit about impressing.

 

[Arianrhod]

It is my very great pleasure to remind you yet again that you are nobody's moral standard, nor are anyone that people give a tin shit about impressing.

"Is" anyone.

 

[Cecilie1200]

It's amazing to me how many of you don't realize how much you paid for other people's healthcare before the PPACA.

It's amazing to me that you have so assiduously avoided any contact with people who aren't exactly like you that you don't realize we DO know this, and we bitched about it nonstop, and it was one of our major objections to Obamacare that it already sucked.

 

[Cecilie1200]

It is my very great pleasure to remind you yet again that you are nobody's moral standard, nor are anyone that people give a tin shit about impressing.

"Is" anyone.

Actually, fucknut, that particular typo should have been "nor are YOU anyone".

There is just no end to you sounded like the dumbest person in the room, is there? Even my mistakes are smarter than you are.

 

[Arianrhod]

It is my very great pleasure to remind you yet again that you are nobody's moral standard, nor are anyone that people give a tin shit about impressing.

"Is" anyone.

Actually, fucknut, that particular typo should have been "nor are YOU anyone".

So either way you made an error while trying to impress me with your brilliance. Got it.

 

[Wry Catcher]

Social Contract Theory | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Very relevant ^^^ if one wants to have an informed opinion.