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Senator Sanders: Are You Lying or Merely a Sap?
In our preferred world, politics would revolve around intelligent argumentation, clever rhetoric, and appropriate deference would be given to facts. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world. The world we live in is more dominated by popularity and personality than it is by principle.
This reality is why Bernie Sanders is still a contender to win the Democrat Presidential nomination. How has he gotten this far? By promising his followers a bribe. The opening bid? Forgiveness of all student loan debt. But that’s merely an aperitif; a foretaste of the giant enchilada Senator Bern has promised everybody in the form of free healthcare for all.
As conservatives know, however, life is infrequently a set of choices between “good” and “bad” outcomes but more frequently a choice between lesser and greater tragedies; want always exceeds supply. Surely, as addlepated as Senator Sanders seems, somewhere deep inside he and his followers must know this to be true.
You’d think that given how ambitious his plans to give away things for free are, he’d start small, just as a test … you know, to see if it works? Perhaps: From the architect of free healthcare for all comes the free t-shirt!
No?
If you think that your t-shirts are expensive now, just wait until they’re free.
Published in Economics
“Free” indeed
Embrace the power of “and.” (h/t @skipsul)
Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty it’s all free at last.
I’m pretty sure that given Sanders’s consistency over the
geological epochsyears that he is neither lying nor a sap, but the far more dangerous type: The True Believer ®. True Believers remake the world to fit their beliefs, and are never persuaded by evidence, argument, logic, or countervailing emotions.WAIT?!?!?!?! HES CHARGING FOR LAWN SIGNS!!!???
He needs to raise money… so he can pay for stuff… like lawn signs.
I have been in politics at the riding level in Canada for 15 years. No one has ever sold signs. Thats crazy.
In fairness, that photo may merely be of an independent supporter capitalizing (as it were *cough*) off of Bernie’s name. I see people all the time around here selling shirts, buttons, yard signs, and hats with “Trump” all over them out of their cars on empty lots.
No fair copying Bernie’s model vis a vis socialism!
He doesn’t say free, but from
https://berniesanders.com/issues/health-care-for-all/
(Emphasis added)
We say to the private health insurance companies: whether you like it or not, the United States will join every other major country on earth and guarantee healthcare to all people as a right. All Americans are entitled to go to the doctor when they’re sick and not go bankrupt after staying in the hospital.
///
Details (sort of) at link
Yeah. “Healthcare as a right” not a “privilege” sounds an awful lot like “free.”
But of course he’s vague about this; he and his people have no idea what they’re for and a much greater idea of what they’re against.
How does one have a right that places a burden on another?
I’m a physician. Do people have a right to my services?
Most of the other candidates have joined him, so they must believe that most of the party has as well. One can’t know if they actually believe such nonsense, but he probably does on some level. When my boss who was the Ambassador where I served in 1990 was verbally celebrating the collapse of the Soviet Union, he tells me I said, more or less, “brace yourself, our left has just been empowered to move the entire party to the left.” I don’t remember the conversation but that’s just the way the leftist fantasies work and it’s good for our left not to have any important reality around to contradict it.
Many rights place some sort of burden in another. My right of way means someone else has to give way.
Depends on whether you are in private practice or not.
If you work at a VA hospital then arguably veterans might have that right.
If you choose not to work at the VA then that’s certainly also a valid choice – but then it’s up to the VA to find another doctor who will. Nobody is irreplaceable.
Problem is, this is not a winning argument. Will conservatives ever learn? Probably not.
So, a true believing sap, then?
I just wish all of the Democratic candidates could be president. Think of the utopia we would live in. Sanders will give us all free health care and free college. Elizabeth Warren would eliminate 80% of gun deaths. Joe Biden would cure cancer. I think they all endorse the Green New Deal, which means we will all have either brand new homes or the government will retrofit our existing homes to bring them up to state of the art standards in energy efficiency. There will be no unemployment because we can all get government jobs. And the only people who will really be hit hard with higher taxes are the 1% who haven’t been paying their fair share. Somebody just needs to promise to make fat people thin and old people young.
Just true believing saps don’t know they are saps
I would contract with the VA to provide my services to Veterans.
They would not have a “right” to force me to provide care for them in any other setting, and I could elect not to contract with the VA and not provide those services. If no one agrees to provide those services how would one exercise this so called right to healthcare?
Rights in the US Constitution are negative rights, ie things that belong to you that cannot be taken away by the government
You have a right to free speech, life, private property, freedom of religion, habeas corpus, a fair trial.
Come on “right of way” is not a right. It’s rule for traffic.
@percival, you might want to hang on to this one. I can foresee its usefulness.
Eats, Shoots and Leaves.
Yes, that’s what I said.
In a free market somebody would.
They certainly have, pretty much, in every market economy with universal health insurance – and done so without being coerced.
So while you are technically correct, it doesn’t seem to be a real issue?
Really. No coercion?
Can a doctor in Canada not participate in their single payer plan and make a living?
Nobody is forced to be a doctor.
But there are huge limits on being a doctor. The freedom of assosiation between Doctor and Patient is totally trampled.
Further, you claim there is a right to healthcare, but, I would argue that being forced to wait 6 months for a procedure is not much of a right. Forcing people with means to accpet the same wait as someone without means is just evil.
I agree – which is why those who idolize the Canadian system are basically speaking through their hats because the long wait-times inherent to a 100% publicly funded healthcare system are mitigated by the safety valve of being able to purchase such services directly here in the States.
The notion that you wouldn’t be able to engage in a profession (being a doctor is truly a profession) unless you were doing so under the auspices of government seems antithetical to the American ethic.
Why? Should people have been able to buy themselves onto lifeboats on the Titanic?
(Also, I just provided the Bernie money quote. Some societies do decide to make health care [to some level] universally available. It’s a right the way access to public schools is. )