Sometimes, the hypocrisy is so delicious, I can’t stand it. Texas Representative Kevin Brady is apparently upset that the D.C. metro subway system did not provide added services to accommodate the Tea-party protests last weekend. From the Wall Street Journal:
“These individuals came all the way from Southeast Texas to protest the excessive spending and growing government intrusion by the 111th Congress and the new Obama administration,” Brady wrote. “These participants, whose tax dollars were used to create and maintain this public transit system, were frustrated and disappointed that our nation’s capital did not make a great effort to simply provide a basic level of transit for them.”
He added that an 80 year old woman and several veterans in wheelchairs were forced to pay for cabs. These private sector cabs (which were much more expensive and much less convenient) took them to their protest against government-provided services, when they would have preferred to ride on a taxpayer-funded socialist subway. No word yet on whether any heads exploded due to the massive internal contradictions.
I wonder how many of the tea-party crowd were thinking "If God wanted us to use taxis, He wouldn't have given us subways!"
The hostility that conservatives display toward "socialism" is revealing. In America's past, there once was a time when "public" services were not public. Police and fire departments, for example, functioned like insurance companies do today: if you weren't a dues-paying subscriber, then you didn't get police or fire protection. One wonders if
conservative Americans of the past ranted about "socialism" when the police and fire departments were brought under public financing, or when public schools were created.
I got to thinking more about this topic earlier today, when I asked myself the following question: why do so many American conservatives support "socialism" when it applies to some services (e.g., police protection, prisons, fire departments, elementary education, etc.), but scream like little children when someone suggests applying it to other services (e.g., healthcare, college financial aid, low-income housing, etc.)? Here's my answer: wealthy Americans (who tend to be conservative) have lots of stuff to protect from robbery and fire (and are accordingly more likely targets for violent crime), so they are delighted to have society (i.e., poor people) share the costs of protecting life, property and possessions. Likewise, business owners (who also tend to be conservative) want a labor pool of minimally-educated people (so they don't have to pay their own money to educate their workforce), so they support basic public education. However, from the perspective of a rich American, things such as healthcare for all, higher education for all, housing for all, etc., do not benefit them whatsoever. To the contrary, healthcare for all might remove a big motivation for their employeees to continue working in boring or dead-end jobs. Higher education for all means that their children must potentially compete against the entire population for grades and degrees, not just against those people who can afford to pay tuition. And housing for all threatens the pocketbooks of landlords. Therefore, wealthy folks — the same ones who eagerly support the building of more prisons or the invasion of Iraq — oppose sharing the costs for programs that benefit the broader society and deride such programs as "socialism."
Yep! No socialistic Commie healthcare from the guvmunt, and leave my Medicare the hell alone!
DOUBLETHINK!!!