I am bringing back one of my favorite posts for January of last year. It seems appropriate given all we have learned from the twenty-odd, and I mean odd, Republican debates we have had to endure so far. I’m sure that if the topic had come up during one of their debates they would all have throughly backed this theme.
From January 11, 2011
The first words of this article caught my attention today. Let’s pull a few quotes from the article; they are in blue below. If you want to see the original article by Anthony Schlaff click on the link above.
“If traffic lights were invented today, the Republican Party would be against them. After all, aren’t traffic lights a perfect symbol for government imposition on individual freedom? The government takes our money to build and maintain them, and then uses them to tell us when we can stop and when we can go.”
If I didn’t know better I would have bet that the above quote was from Will Rogers. Congratulations Anthony for getting him down pat. The people who currently have control of the Republican Party, and I do mean control, don’t seem to believe there is anything called social responsibility! They think everything should be left up to each of them (only the radical right) to determine. Put that belief to its fullest extent and get rid of all stoplights! If they do get rid of stoplights than I guess police are next. After all what do police do but keep people from doing what they want to do 
What kind of freedom do we really want? The answer becomes clear when we consider the kinds of “freedom” that the status quo – a lack of such government involvement – imparts. How many of us want the freedom to face medical bankruptcy, or the freedom to be denied coverage (and care) because of a preexisting condition? And how many of us see dying, due to lack of insurance, from a treatable or curable disease as an acceptable cost of individual liberty?As with traffic lights, there is a trade-off; we cannot get something for nothing. The only way to have a system that guarantees necessary care for those in need – to give us the freedom to live our lives without that fear – is to make sure everyone is included in the system. Many of us, after all, choose to marry. This decision substantially restricts us and increases our responsibilities. Yet the responsibilities marriage entails also give new meaning to our lives. Liberating ourselves from every commitment and every shared responsibility would not be freedom. It would leave us each isolated and unfulfilled: freedom as truly nothing left to lose.
According to the simplified notion of personal responsibility [as espoused by many Republicans], people should take it upon themselves to get educated, keep their water clean, and properly dispose of household waste. It sounds good in theory, but would you live in a town that had no schools, and no water or sewer treatment, but gave every household the “freedom” to manage these concerns on their own? Probably not. Thankfully, citizens across America have the freedom – through government – to manage these problems collectively. A century ago, that is what they did, and we are all the freer for having school, water, and sewer systems run by our cities and towns.
If public schools or public drinking water and sewer systems were invented today, would Republicans oppose them, along with the traffic lights?
Let’s all get on the Radical Right bandwagon. Look at all the money we can save by eliminating all this “social responsibility” stuff. Everyone should have a right to die young if they don’t “choose” to have any money to do otherwise. To the RR government has no place in our society except to protect their guns and their seemingly never ending wars to use them. Let’s don’t tell them but all this has been already tried; it’s called anarchy. But what do I know. This type of thinking would all be very funny if it were not so tragically sorrowful.
All I know is what I read in the headlines……
RJ's Corner 