Sunday, June 19, 2011

apropos partisanship

A related email from my friend Lars which arrived at about the same time:

it fascinates me how Republicans think the US consitution is a libertarian policy document. It sets up a system, a procedure, for making laws, with elections and checks and balances etc., it doesn't prescribe economic policy. One of the arguments of Republicans is, so if the federal govt. can mandate health insurance, it can also mandate you to buy broccoli. Well, that's up the the people, try running on that platform! The point is, it's the American people who decide if they want certain policies or not. I agree, the ACA is messy and imperfect but that's because the Republicans refused to cooperate, putting party before country the decided to sabotage anything Obama did because they knew "if he's successful on this - and on the economy -, we've lost the WH for a couple of decades." The ACA is very close to Bob Dole's plan back in the early 90'ies, which was backed by the Heritage Foundation and several Rep. Senators as an alternative to "Hillary care," so it's not like this is something they're really against. It's just that if Obama is for it, it must be un-American. Personally, I think a single-payer system, with death panels, is the way to go.


http://www.slate.com/id/2283415/pagenum/all/#p2


One of the commenters argued my point exactly:

"One hugely important realization you have to make is just because it something is a bad idea, doesn't mean it is unconstitutional."

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