Liberal free for all coming to an end

[Enoch Root]

I see the way language plays here. Entitlement is a bad word, full of negative connotations. It draws the image of an unruly child holding his parents to the fire for something he doesn’t need yet keeps demanding. But the same could not be said of something like healtchcare. This is something people need. And if sacrifices must be made to give the people something as vital as that, then why not? This is not insidious. It is a matter of compassion for the fellow man.

Language. Politicians have a way of screwing with it, people will not necessarily notice. For example, I was watching the news the other day and a pundit tried to rebut something someone else said by calling what the man proposed “class warfare.” They were speaking of raising taxes on the wealthy. This, as anyone can see with enough time, is spin. It is using, manipulating, language. It poisons the well because of its violent tones. Yet the rich get richer and the poor get poorer—and I will not apologize for using such a clich?d sentence, for it is true and gets the point across. If anyone is waging “warfare” it is not the poor or the middle class waging war on the rich, but the other way around. It is a case of the victimizers making themselves out to be victims. It reminds me of opponents of same-sex marriage and all that good stuff claiming that same-sex couples do not deserve marriage because they are asking for “special” rights. When it is, in fact, the opponents who are obliquely asking for special rights since they wish for the ability to get married to be cordoned off only for heterosexual couples. In both cases those who claim “class warfare” is being waged against the rich or that same-sex couples are asking for “special” rights are manipulating language.

I remember wanting to tear at my scalp whenever I heard McCain spout his nonsense about “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps.” Tracy, you were born, fed and bred in a country that has no sense of community. No sense of solidarity. It is every man for himself. The cowboy is a national symbol! But no one can live by oneself. No man is an island. It is an illusion. Are we individuals? Yes. But being an individual is not about “me, me, me, me.” It is about growing. It is about knowing oneself. And from there, knowing others and loving others and caring for others. In your country, growing emotionally and intellectually and expressing that love is too often cause for discomfort. I know this. I lived in the United States for five years and learned this lesson quite well. And I was hurt over and again because I knew I could not truly be myself with most of the populace. I had to live, so to speak, in the closet.

You live in tiny rooms, in insulated houses, in suburbs, where no one knows your name. Rather than in the light, outside, amongst friends and family on whom to depend and whom to love. To depend is not a bad thing. We need other people and we need help. It is the human condition. But in your country, to depend on anything is seen as a bad thing. And the powers that be depend on you thinking so, so that, as SMC put it, they never have to contribute. So that they never have to sacrifice. Living instead off us to an extent, in total disregard of everyone the rest of the time. The idea that they should never sacrifice or that they do no wrong, that they are the economic engine of your country and therefore deserve all they make, is an idea better left to disappear into the wind. A fiction, and quite a fiction it is. I do not like the near-reverent tones of many people when they speak of “the free market.” They sound like proselytizers. The invisible hand of the free market… Much like a god behind all, an invisible arbiter.

I do not know your background Tracy. But I cannot help thinking that you were well taken care of when you were younger. That your parents had the means for ___ (whatever means those were for whatever you needed). Yet that is not the case for everyone. It is easy to say things like “pulling by one’s bootstraps” when you do have bootstraps and they are fine leather or some other material whose integrity has not been compromised. It is another when you are poor and live in a terrible neighborhood. It is not so easy to move up socially. It can take generations, when it could be made to much easier. Why shouldn’t we have such things as national healthcare where all are covered, and people need not worry about how to pay for college, and instead need only prepare the boxes and the car and send your child off to study? We shouldn’t have to drown ourselves in debt for these things and then get drowned in grief and depression over what that debt could do to us. These things should be our birthright—never to be taken for granted, always fought for, always to be cherished.

Often when I hear opposition to such things as a system where all are given healthcare or supplying higher education, it does not seem to truly be about financial concerns, but about disregard for anyone other than oneself. Is this the case with you? Or could I rest easy knowing it is not so? You say that now is not the time for something like healthcare reform—yet when will it be the time? I read such a thing from you and I cannot help thinking that it is but a stalling tactic, much as others have done for a decade now concerning allowing homosexuals into the army. Now is not the time, yet when there is relative peace there is still opposition. When will it be the time?