Change of direction.

So, clearly I haven't had the inclination to write much here lately. I feel like i have been writing quite a bit though. Most of my writing has been in the form of responses to various people that I find on the Internet with opinions that suck (no shortage there). The problem is that all that effort eventually disappears into the digital abyss. Since I put so much effort into that time suck I should have something to show for it. To that end I have decided to use this blog primarily as a repository for my altercations with other people on issues of theology, philosophy, and politics with my commentary (appearing in red) as needed.

First up is a guy named Neal. He is a right-wing fundy with a blog. I first encountered him at a right-wing fundy site called Federal Observer that posts some of his essays. I posted biting, but not rude counter-points to nonsense of his and other essayists there for a bit. I was called names and indirectly threatened by the readers there and soon was banned from posting at that site. Anyway, Neal is just slightly more thoughtful than the average person there, though still a raving nut bag. He is typical of the mindset of the burgeoning tea party movement. His latest post is a rant against health care reform. He makes use of the argument that since polling on health care reform reflect slightly negative views of it by the American people that our government has done something bad by passing it. Not just bad but something something warranting violence. We are now in a position comparable to that of the colonists facing King George in the American revolution. Here's my two cents:

Whether you, as an individual supported this health care bill or not, what does the action of Congress tell you about what they think about the wishes of a majority of the people? It tells me that they could give a rats ass about what we think.

Well, our government is not (at least it shouldn’t) be run on the basis of opinion polls. You may recall that the public option polled well, so by your logic we should be upset with Republicans for promising to filibuster legislation with the public option in it. Health care reform was a primary platform of the Obama campaign, so no one ought to be surprised that reform is what we got.

In my opinion, though, I don’t think there could be such a thing as health care reform that could poll higher that 50% given the convoluted state of thought of the average person. People want high quality, affordable health care, available to all citizens while at the same time wanting lower taxes, a lower deficit and smaller government. Well, they may as well want their surgeries done by magic talking pandas.

The problem with health care is that it is not like any other good or service. It would be like someone suddenly showing up at your house one day and telling you that you have to by a car or you will die. You happen to have insurance for such an occasion, but of course, the insurance company losses profit by shelling out money for you to by the car, so they will find ways to get out of doing that. Government could probably regulate the “buy a car or die” insurance industry better, but no one wants that because it would result in expanding governments power. So just what type of policies would you support if you were a person in this position?

There are those in this country who feel that history is repeating itself, that the actions of our government bear a striking resemblance to the actions of King George, leaving the colonists no recourse but to take up arms against their government.

Obama is not King George and the Tea partyers are not colonists. The founding fathers saw fit to create a system where you do, in fact, have recourse if you are in the political minority. It is known as the democratic process: persuade a majority of Americans to elect representatives that vow to repeal the health care reform bill. That ought to be easy for tea partyers to do given the polling data you cited, right? If that’s the case then why should anyone need to resort to tactics that are utterly antithetical to democracy and would surely be condemned by the founders of this great nation.

In fact, I would argue that our nation has remained as strong and stable as it has because political minorities, in fact, do have peaceful recourse. It can be a slow and difficult process, granted, but that is not a valid excuse. Of course some minorities have had to fight for their basic political rights- the right of suffrage, for example- but tea partyers are not in that position. They should be condemned, in my view, for pretending that they are, thereby trivializing what a true fight against tyranny is really about.