Plan B Forum

Jim Wright follows up on the above tweet with a longer post on Facebook:

"Calling universal healthcare and public education 'free stuff' is the same as calling a Navy aircraft carrier a 'free ship'"

That's what I said last week on Twitter.

That tweet and an expanded version posted here were prompted by a brief IM exchange as explained in my original Facebook post.
https://www.facebook.com/Stonekettle/po ... 0342524369

The original tweet has now been shared and liked several thousand times and seen by more than a quarter million people.

A number of you have said that you don't get Twitter, you don't see the purpose. Well, like any medium, like any technology, Twitter is what you make of it. For me, at least in part, Twitter is a way to test the waters, to toss out ideas in thumbnail fashion and see what comes back.

What came back in this case is interesting.

Interesting in the many ways my comment was interpreted. Both liberals and conservatives retweeted my comments and said "See? Exactly!" and both were certain they were making some profound statement about the other.

Noted writer and futurist Karl Schroeder responded that while universal healthcare and education are not "free" NOT having them costs a hell of a lot more than having them. Karl comes from a country where he's in a position to know since he lives in a place where warships and access to healthcare and education successfully share equal priority.

But that wasn't my point. Not exactly.

Or maybe it was.

See, more common was the sentiment expressed by somebody named Joe McDermott, to wit: "I get no benefit from your education and health care that I have to pay for. We all benefit from the ship."
I, me personally, get no benefit from your, you personally, education and healthcare, that I, me personally, have to pay for.

We ALL benefit from the ship.

Do you see it? That's the difference between a Canadian like Karl Schroeder and an American like Joe. Karl views education, healthcare, and defense, all, as the duty of civilization - that advanced technological civilization can't exist without all three and more. Joe on the other hand views only the warship as a benefit to the public at large. For Joe education and healthcare are individual matters which aren't his concern.

Karl sees the big picture, Joe is looking at a selfie.

Here in America, when a liberal such as Bernie Sanders suggests we as a nation should make college affordable, or perhaps "free" (in the sense that the student will not have upfront costs but will get an advanced education and therefore access to a better livelihood and therefore will pay it back with interest in taxes and increased contributions to society), or a liberal progressive such as (pre-presidential-candidate) Hillary Clinton suggests single-payer universal healthcare should be a right of all Americans (who will then be more content citizens and pay back the cost of their increased health in productivity and contributions to society), certain conservatives inevitably respond with "LIBERALS JUST WANT FREE STUFF!"

HOWEVER, when conservatives such as Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or Ben Carson suggest that instead America would be strengthened far more by new aircraft carriers and bombers, nobody says, "YOU JUST WANT FREE SHIPS!"

While I believe such is the nature of the world that any nation must certainly invest in its national security, I think unfettered access to education and healthcare, especially for the young, are equally if not more important to a healthy and vibrant society.

Ultimately, warships and bombers are only as good as those who build and wield them.

Healthy societies, the ones we admire, advance by education, by science and technology, through sustained innovation, strong social bonds, and most especially via optimism and pride. It's hard to innovate, it's hard to be an optimist, when you're sick and uneducated.

The societies we despise advance by the sword.

The thing is, only an educated and healthy civilization knows the difference.

Those who believe their civic duty extends only to warships and not to education and healthcare are fools.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms in not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

--Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

I watch the other repubs attack trump for being too liberal and generous as far as health care policy, and I think to myself....

....could these people be any dumber?

when he says that he won t let people die in the street...., they attack him for it!!!!

....as long as the repubs call him a liberal, and the dems call him a Nazi.....

he can t lose...... but hey, they are your parties, do what you want to with them....

Sue U wrote:"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms in not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

--Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

Where did conservatives like that go? Can we get them back somehow?



yrs,
rubato

It's just mind-boggling to realize that Ike would now probably be considered somewhere to the left of Bernie Sanders...

I have always said that Obama is actually an Eisenhower Republican. To hear today's Republicans branding him a "socialist" would be laughable, if not for so many of the GOP "base" actually believing it.

Besides laughing at the meme itself, I laughed at the use of the word "ITS"...

Where did conservatives like that go? Can we get them back somehow?

They were buried in zealot poop.

There is sort of an urban legend that neoconservatism and the National Review magazine started among reactionaries because Ike was too liberal.

well, after we had defeated hitler and japan, and we already had built all the planes boats and tanks that we would need for a while...

when we were nuclear giants....

and when he saw the developing military-industrial complex , and its implications....

....it was kinda easy to spend on bridges instead of bullets.

we face a different set of circumstances at the moment....

Apparently wes was absent from history class on the day they taught...everything.

Eisenhower was much tougher in practice as President then some of his philosophical rhetoric would suggest...

He sent troops into Lebanon, advisers into Vietnam, and signed off on covert operations to overthrow several left-wing governments...

He was no Bernie Sanders, and I have a hard time imagining him sitting with his thumb up his ass (ala Obama) while an enemy entity like ISIS grew to the point that it could take over a third of two countries...

Eisenhower was not a fan of letting threats metastasize into larger threats...