Now brought to you by the Atlantic.
Two thoughts:
1) WTF? The year I was born is my freakin' fault? The old are responsible for their oldness?
2) Guliani has a health plan?
Yeah, f*ck old people. Down with homework,down with homework...
Hey, Meg, some of us would see a doctor more often if we had access to insurance, but some of us don't, thanks to the policies you do your part to uphold.
Why do these people still call themselves "Libertarians" and not take a more apt and descriptive name, like "neo-feudalists"?
My mom's 81. She has atypical dementia, like her mother before her (this, then is her culpability: poor choice of DNA). She's well-off enough to afford a one-bedroom apartment in an assisted living center, where, by the way, nearly 100% of the residents have some form of dementia. She can't take care of her own hygiene. Her oven is disconnected; I can't take her flowers because she'll run water for them and forget to turn it off. She worked in a war plant during WWII, was a homemaker for fifteen years, then went back to work and paid into Social Security for thirty years, as did her deceased, war veteran husbands. Our financial advisor says the money should hold out ten years, probably longer than she will. If it doesn't, she could wind up as one of four parents in their 80s and 90s my wife and I, and our siblings, will have to decide how to support as we near retirement ourselves. I have yet to talk this over with any of them, but my own plan is to begin robbing libertarians the minute it becomes necessary.
. I have yet to talk this over with any of them, but my own plan is to begin robbing libertarians the minute it becomes necessary.
Coincidentally, the only part of the state they don't find illegitimate will then be on your ass.
Strange, isn't it?
That article (and its deeper meaning) is one of the most reprehensible things I believe you've ever linked to.
(Loud toots of a horn, Rip Taylor throws confetti on everyone, cue "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now")
Wow.
Well, if old people didn't have the puritan ethics to be born thin and ruthless and recently, I don't know what you expect the rest of us to do for them.
Geez, Roy. Show some respect. They also serve who only stand and pose.
This was very hard for me to read and I read it all, including the comments. Who are these people? Has nothing affected them yet in life where they get a chance to walk in the other guys shoes? My Mom suffered from difuse Lewy body dementia at a fairly young age in todays standards and it was not pretty and it was not quick. So doghouse riley, please forgive me when I tell you most sincerely that I hope your Mom passes peacefully and quietly in her sleep some day soon. And yeah, I'll join you in robbing these mofo's. I don't go for the god shit and I'm not into karma but this I do know, every single one of these people are going to die. Ok, now that I've cheered myself up with that fact I'm going back to hanging in the shadows. Good luck doghouse.
"they drank to much"?
Apart from anything else, is this what The Atlantic wants us to read?
People who have managed to actually become old, as a class, are already statistically less likely to have indulged in all the "bad" lifestyle choices that libertarians like to blame for... well... just about everything. Moreover (a McArdle tic), it's the young and healthy, as a class, who are more likely to not eat right, smoke, avoid preventative healthcare, drink too much, take drugs, speed, or engage in dangerous sports. And if she really thinks that younger, healthier people have almost no causal role in the ill-health of others, she might like to spend some time in an elementary school petri dish. Oh, well. This is the same person who claims that the modern American postal worker works fewer hours, has a less stressful job, and enjoys a better standard of living than Cornelius Vanderbilt.
It always fascinates me how libertarians think corporations are virtuous, incorruptible and beyond reproach or regulation, but people, or at least the non-rich, are culpable even for the germs they breathe, the genes they inherit, and the normal physical decline of senescence.
And Doghouse, I volunteer as beater—I'll flush 'em out of the Manhattan Institute with copies of The Nation, Colleen can sap 'em in the noggin with Nickle & Dimed in America, and then you relieve them of their filthy corporatist lucre.
And on a lighter note, while taxes may only be for the little people, grim death is for evvabuddy!
Where to begin? The mind reels. But thanks for blogging this, Roy. It reminds MFD why he got his MPH.
Yes, thanks, Roy, from a longtime lurker. Don't know what I'd do without you and R. Porrofatto and Doghouse Riley and so many others.
Try to imagine this woman on a lifeboat.
I find it easier to imagine her outside the lifeboat, circling it.
"... while younger, healthier people have almost no causal role in the ill-health of others"
Really? She's bringing up some serious bile from me ...
Young people have never been responsible for the ill health of anyone. Now if you'll excuse me, I (a young person) am going to DRIVE AND DRIVE WHOOO!
Nah, just kidding, I wouldn't give you old fucks the time of day, let alone hit you with my car.
I meant "drink and drive," of course. Looks like I already started half of the equation.
Okay, I tried imagining this woman on a lifeboat. Killed the right way, of course, in order to keep her kosher. Then again, she might serve a better purpose as fish bait...
Seriously, though. How does someone become this big of a fucking bitch?
Fuckin Libertarians. Just fuck them all. Bitchy little assholes.
Clearly, you all don't understand: Megan McArdle will never be old, demented, or sick. And, if she is, she'll crisply comply with her libertarian ideals and book passage on the first ice flow from Fairbanks.
To be fair, she's only talking about the old-and-sick, not the old and the sick.
I guess the young-and-sick don't count for a whole lot, huh? Nor, for that matter, do the old-and-poor:
"One might argue that the transfer should flow to those whose need is greater, but as a class, the old and sick are wealthier than the young and healthy. They have more assets, many have a guaranteed income, and few have children to support."
The upshot is, she can only paint her rosy scenario by lumping disparate individuals into "classes."
Nice reasoning there, Comrade.
Tallulah Bunk-head?
Thank you... try the veal!
I hate libertarians. They are deserving of nothing but scorn. Fucking idiots.
2) Guliani has a health plan?
Yeah, but here's the catch in the fine print, it's only projected to work for 30 years because once the ice floes fully melt due to warming, that's it. No more "non-assisted ice floating" for the old, addicted and/or infirmed.
The ironic thing is that reading that McArdle post really made me want to have a drink. Or nine.
"I find it easier to imagine her outside the lifeboat, circling it."
A+
Brian C.B.,
Maybe she'll have her consciousness downloaded into her iPod or whatever, like Glenn Reynolds is planning on doing.
I used to date a libertarian and she was all the time spouting off shit like this. Just the most horrible, faux-Nietzchian nonsense. Was all the time bitching about "government run schools" and her answer when I asked "Well, what about the kids who do want to learn but who don't have parents who are able/willing to pay for private schools/home school?", she'd say, "You can't save everyone." Then she'd get mad it me for saying that I thought it was sort of chickenshit to not even try. For the record, this was a trustfund girl who'd never worked a job where she could actually get fired. Once told me she thought school teachers were worse for children's psyches than child molestors, and I pretty much quit calling her after that.
Come to think of it, this girl looked a whole lot like the shot of McArdle that's currently up at Sadly, No!, as a matter of fact. Which is a weird feeling until I remember that the vast majority of my romantic mistakes all look sorta like librarians with drinking problems.
I dunno why you'd want to read McArdle anyway. She's a shit, simple as that, and anything she writes will not only be way off the mark but is likely to make you despair of humanity.
Will she be not wearing underpants like Tallulah Bankhead wasn't during filming?
In addition to choosing to have substandard genes, things the old and sick are responsible for include: carelessly believing the government that told them DDT was safe, irresponsibly believing the corporations that swore their products were harmless, recklessly eating food that had not been adequately inspected, incautiously doing jobs with poor safety protocols, and living in polluted areas in high style.
Well, she may not live to be old and demented, that's up to chance and genes. But she certainly gives every chance of being young and demented.
aimai
I hope I live long enough to see her get old and sick. Gawd, what a moron.
The first word of this post's title appears to have one 'n' too many.
"the old and sick bear some of the responsibility for their own ill health"
No shit, Dick Tracy.
Next up, the sun rises in the east.
Oh my God, that isn't a parody. I thought sure it was a parody. Nobody can be that dumb. Nobody. And yet Megan is. She so totally is.
Would somebody please tell me if there's anything more to libertarianism than, "I got mine, fuck you"?
I was thinking about libertarians today in the context of the Chinese-made toy recall. What would be the libertarian logic here? Everybody is supposed to spend countless hours researching Chinese manufacturing practices (or, better yet, tour the factories) before they buy any toys? And those who get poisoned because they don't have that kind of leisure time and resources deserve what they get? It seems like these libertarian types are just willfully blind to the fact that we aren't equally "free" to make choices when there is such disparity of income.
She may as well say "as a class, women are much more likely to get pregnant than are men and will therefore be more likely to take family medical leave. Companies should therefore pay women less to make up for the loss of productivity when the woman is at home caring for her newborn baby."
You know, even if those scorned, careless sick old people had lived the life of the righteous, they would still get old and sick and die - most people do not die due to superb health.
And then you and I follow in their footsteps, whether we had wine with dinner or not.
McArdle will waltz through life, convinced of her own innate superiority and granted favours by employers and acquaintances until she steps out in front of a bus, and then starts whining about how she's not getting what she deserves from everyone else.
If I gave a shit about her, I'd hope for an intervention.
But I don't. Because she is a shit.
You ever noticed how once people fail a couple times themselves, after they're no longer propped up by their parents or mentors, the politics and philosophy of Rand becomes so transparent, so trite.
I wouldn't wish that sad inhuman mindset on my worst enemy.
Would somebody please tell me if there's anything more to libertarianism than, "I got mine, fuck you"?
[slam]
"... while younger, healthier people have almost no causal role in the ill-health of others"
excepting, of course, black men between the ages of 16 and 34, RIGHT?
Sort of on topic, but a good friend (religious and all) read a headline that said:
Danish study says glass of wine a day reduces risk of death
To his credit he said, "what the fuck, drinking wine allows you to avoid death!?"
A life lesson lost on Ms. M. We all get what we can from this world, and those of us who aren't like you try to get it on our own, and without harming others or ignoring their existence. We actually enjoy and look forward to doing nice things for others.
Burn in hell.
they drank to much
To tell the truth, I'll drink to just about anything.
OK, McArdle is McOrrible. But isn't this just the quintessence of Western politics, never mind wacko libertarianism?
I got mine. And I got a gun. Fuck you for not getting yours and not getting your gun before I got mine.
Now slave, get sick, and die! Har!
"2) Guliani has a health plan?"
It's the Viking Health plan. You get sick, we through you overboard.
Anonymous:
I find it easier to imagine her outside the lifeboat, circling it.
Awesome.
I left a comment there musing what happens to her argument if she and her ilk were to get their likely wish and have Social Security abolished.
Since that act was the single most important factor in reducing poverty among the elderly, what happens to their relative wealth then?
Oh of course: the usual libertarian Race to the Bottom model. Piggy's head on a stick.
Why do these people still call themselves "Libertarians" and not take a more apt and descriptive name, like "neo-feudalists"?
Because they're dishonest as well as self-deluding. If they could look at their own prejudices in the cold rationalist light they're always prescribing for the rest of us, they'd slit their worthless throats from shame.
I was thinking about libertarians today in the context of the Chinese-made toy recall. What would be the libertarian logic here?
According to McCardle's chirpy soul-sister on CNN last week, we should "be careful what we ask for" before demanding product-safety inspections from China, because if we start prices at Wal-Mart will go up and that would be "tragic". Unlike, for instance, brain-damaged little kids. Of course, Megan will assure us that those toddlers made a "choice" to suck on those lead-contaminated toys, so they're only getting what they deserve...
Believe me, I *wish* I were making this stuff up!
The best part of the joke is that nowadays people, especially young ones, have healthier lifestyles, you know, they eat salads and work out so they'll escape more health problems in old age. Good joke, come their time and there is no health insurance to get them through to their death. They'll experience healthy heart attacks, have healthy cancer, go through healthy dementia because, you know, they're healthy. But of course if these experiences turn out to be unhealthy, they can only blame it on themselves for eating the wrong salads and not working out properly. Good joke, don't you think so? The young will never get old, the healthy will never get sick, the idiotic will never wise up and accept the human condition, especially not the ideologically insane who will end up demanding the most benefits to care for their healthy sicknesses.
Usually, when I see there's been a bunch of comments here in a short period of time (like 48 in less than nine hours), I think, "Ooh! A dissenter in our midst!" And eagerly seek out the debate.
But no, not this time, we are all just that swiftly and unanimously appalled. This may be a new Alicublog record for speed + volume of unanimity.
It's been said better in this thread, but so much of Libertarianism AND Conservatism is "Some people are gonna just have to face some tough choices and circumstances in life, and tough consequences to their poor decisions. Just not me."
Most of us at least have the decency to be embarrassed about our craven selfishness rather than trying to justify it with political philosophy and legislating it.
But, McArdle does make one good point: The old and sick "engaged...in dangerous sports." Who here hasn't resented their taxpayer money going to care for leather-helmet-related longterm injuries?
to much ==> too much
As an old-timer, I'd be happy to crawl out on an ice berg to die, but they are all melting.
So this is what theh humanities education dollar buys nowadays?
You know, the worst of it is that contempt is wasted on such people. It's really the only emotion they truly experience, for one thing, though they prefer to call it a philosophy or a political point of view. "I got mine, fuck you" sounds like magnanimity compared to this. It's "I got mine, if we throw grandma out of the lifeboat can I have her food?"
When they find out how despicable you think they are it just makes them screech and squawk even louder.
The funny thing is that I bet a lot of the Atlantic's subscribers are, uh, old people.
No, no, all you guys have got it wrong. Ms. McArdle doesn't actually believe what she wrote. If I may illustrate:
SUSIE: Hey, Calvin! Are we near a slaughterhouse, or did you forget your deodorant?
CALVIN: Drop dead, Susie! You're so ugly, I hear your mother puts a bag over your head before she kisses you goodnight!
CALVIN, TO AUDIENCE: It's shameless the way we flirt.
See, such an otherwise soulless screed makes perfect sense when you consider that it's about health care. Because who comes to mind when health care blogging comes up? A hunky single young blogger who's acquainted with Ms. McArdle. This disgusting column is actually a grade-school-style love note to get more of Mr. Klein's attention.
What is it with The Atlantic and its love for libertarians? They already had Sullivan - did they really need yet another Randian?
The correct term is "Randroid"
'The old and sick "engaged...in dangerous sports." '
Well, okay. I'll admit I'm tired of all these reckless old sick people and their extreme sports.
On reconsidering there is definitely a class of people who are 'younger, healthier' who pretty much continually have a "causal role in the ill health of others" and that is of course a class of people that Megan McCardle will become intimately aquainted with should her health insurance provide--fetuses and children. If there is anything more dangerous toa woman's health than having children I don't know what it is.
Here's my modern yiddish curse on her: May she have an ectopic pregnancy, a regular pregnancy, back labor, an episiotomy, trouble breast feeding, and the usual eight years in the germ swamp that is young children *without health care*.
Dr. Squid: I can't decide if it's a problem for wardrobe, makeup or hairdressing.
I think that McArdle has dropped the libertarian pretense. She's anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-nanny state, anti safety net, but so are most Republicans. She's an apparent hawk who (IIRC) has no serious problems with torture, the PATRIOT act, or the nullification of habeas corpus. She's uncertain about choice. The only specifically libertarian positions she may still hold would be on the drug laws, and possibly privacy rights.
My understanding is that she grew up among liberals and knows how to schmooze them (e.g. the Yglesias crowd.) because of her backgrounds, she has been able to develop liberal-needling to an art (rather like Sullivan and Hitchens).
Would somebody please tell me if there's anything more to libertarianism than, "I got mine, fuck you"?
You mean other than a complete and utter ignorance of the collective effort it takes to sustain a functioning society? No. That's really all there is to it.
Ezra Klein, apparently, wants to fuck her, or so I infer from his blog.
Sad what passes these days as a redeeming feature...
"You mean other than a complete and utter ignorance of the collective effort it takes to sustain a functioning society?"
Yeah, I do seem to recall something about "We the People...." Can't remember where, though. Damn.
It's vile enough to blame people for their own ill health, but it leaps into the surreally stupid to blame people for the simple fact of getting old.
I also note she scolds the old and sick for not having gone to the doctor enough. Isn't it one of the conservative talking points about the health care system that, if we were careful healthcare shoppers, we'd be less hasty to run to the doctor's office for every little earache, cough or cold, or twinge - which would bring market forces to bear on the system? You just can't win.
This "intergenerational wealth transfer" idea has also been used to argue against any sort of environmental regulation, as in: "Future generations will undoubtedly be wealthier than we are, so restricting our economic activity to provide them with a healthier environment would be, in effect, taking from the poor in order to give to the rich."
I've got to admit, you have to be pretty smart to come up with somthing as stupid as that.
I imagine she'd be the happy meal on the lifeboat . . .
"Again, in individual cases this will not be true; but as a class, the old and sick bear some of the responsibility for their own ill health, while younger, healthier people have almost no causal role in the ill-health of others."
And. of course, as with almost everything that libertarians and conservatives say, that's just not true. But hey, why let science and the facts stand in the way of you throwing Grandma out of the house and taking all her stuff? She shouldn't have gotten old if she didn't want that to happen. Sucker.
I had no idea Megan McCardle was writing from the home planet in "Cocoon." Because otherwise, she'd be asking for a major come-uppance.
Say hi to Wilford Brimley for me!
Libertarians always think that in the Ultimate Libertarian Super-Society, they'd be at the top of the heap, using their Super-Objectivist Powers to bend the world to their will and being worshiped like an emperor by fawning hordes of nerdy honkeys and supermodels.
I'd love to drop them into their perfect libertarian paradise, just so we could compare how many of them ended up sleeping in gutters and how many got turned into Mama Rand's Country-Fried Sausage Biscuits.
Brian:
While there _is_ a very large river that runs through Fairbanks, we'd have a much better chance of being rid of her if she hied herself off to an ice floe somewhere off the northern coast, say, Barrow.
...Of course, the people of Barrow already have enough problems in the winter without being visited by this twit.
Yeah, my 83 year old non-smoking social drinking father who suffers from multiple myeloma is just selfish, expecting life saving chemo and all. The nerve. How old is this vicious, stupid bitch?
A libertarian is just a social darwinist who wants to be an asshole and still get laid.
Maybe Glenn Reynolds will end up guest blogging for Ms McArdle from time to time. Argh. With so many very fine bloggers to pick from--perhaps not quite so many fine conservative bloggers but still many fine middle-of-the-road bloggers--they pick someone I gave up on years ago. Ms McArdle isn't going to be doing any original research or thinking--her work would be pedestrian on your average Newhouse chain paper. Then again, something when very wrong with the Atlantic years ago and I'm not sure journalism or thinking has much to do with management goals.
Not even true in a limited sense
Coronary artery disease (CAD) and lung cancer are about the only at all common diseases that kill the elderly that owe any significant component of their causation to personal behavior. While the component of causation from personal misbehavior is very high for lung cancer, for CAD, which is more than three times more common a cause of death than lung cancer, only a small percentage of the risk is controllable by living right. Together, lung cancer and CAD cause less than 40% of deaths in the elderly, so most of the elderly die of things with no appreciable component of causation by personal behavior at all.
In contrast, the diseases that kill young people are much more preventable by personal choices. Trauma and a sexually transmitted disease (HIV) are by far the leading killers of the young, and both are largely a matter of choosing risky behaviors.
I'll second P. Drano, just adding that I find it undignified the way they slam the stack and do the Dew.
My dumbass grandmother was stupid enough to get polio when she was three. On account of her culpability, her left leg atrophied, and her right leg had to pick up the slack. The knee replacement she needed on her good leg in her 70s was clearly a case of living large and in "high style".
Aside from McArdle's general dumbfuckery, I'm really astonished that someone who goes by the name "Jane Galt" could be so, well, collectivist in her attitude. One of the things Ayn Rand got right was that we are all individuals. Assigning culpability to an entire class of people because of the actions of a (presumed) "average" or "typical" member of the class is really the same impulse that underlies racism, just applied to the old and infirm in this case. Maybe next time McArdle could pick on an even more vulnerable group, like puppies or preemies in the NICU.
Jeebus Christmas... I once thought only a Lileks pile-on could blast me out of lurk mode. Now this Randian biotch has done it to me! Out of curiosity, I actually slogged through Atlas Shlemieled (ya whatever its called)to see if there was ANY redeeming value in Rand's ideology. Found none anywhere; a load of sheep dung from the get-go. That there are actual organisms out there who admire and even pattern their existence based on her shite is frightening. With m.m. its all about how high up on the trough you eat your swill. Until recently, the tobacco industry's mantra was "there is no substantive, clinical evidence that directly links smoking and lung cancer" The poor shlubs who bought into that bilge from the Rich, Powerful, Randian kept smoking until they were as addicted as a junkie. Yeah it's all the smoker's fault. Come to think of it, isn't GW's little party girl daughter gonna marry into that cabal soon? A certain symmetry to that I suppose.
I share the general contempt for libertarians that's on display here. However, Jim Henley and "Thoreau" over at "Unqualified Offerings" are self-identified libertarians, yet they are consistently 1) humane and 2) sane. The same goes for the mysterious "Who Is IOZ?" So there actually are some "libertarians" who are genuinely interested in "liberty", instead of endless smug defenses of the well-connected, ruthless, and privileged.
i think that maybe the problem with megan is that no one ever called her on the outrageous things she said as a child. because kids, they say really terrible stuff sometimes, and totally don't realize it. and then grownups need to step in and point it out. and for the kid, it's kind of embarassing, and it might make them feel bad, but then they learn.
like me, for example: when i was about four, i answered the telephone and an unfamiliar woman asked for my mother. i had been waiting for my mom to come play with me anyway, and i really didn't appreciate the interruption, but i honestly meant no offense whatsoever when i responded with profound skepticism, "does she even know you?" i got my mom to come to the phone, and the woman must have said something to her, because when my mom finally got off, it was not fun play time. she was angry, because i had been really rude. so she explained why, and i felt terrible, and then i learned.
and somehow, this is what never happened for megan. i'm starting now. i have lots of experience with kids, so i decided to try to help her out in the comments with the grand task of understanding why people might be feeling upset because of what she said.
and to add: AAARRRGGGHHH she can be so dreadful!!! to everyone without insurance and with old people they love, i am with you. argh. argh argh.
Sarah and Doghouse win this thread.
Megan's "forebearers" (thanks, CG) on the coming of the Black Death to their village;
"You lucky bastards!"
Gibbon1: "It's the Viking Health plan. You get sick, we through you overboard."
After drinking to much, no doubt.
I'd love to drop them into their perfect libertarian paradise
Somalia?
In a previous life, I heard the Contemporary Christian song (*shudder*) "Lifeboat," in which Mrs. Aryan asks her students who should be thrown out of the lifeboat:
Throw over grandpa 'cause he's getting pretty old/
throw out the baby or we'll all be catching its cold/
throw over fatty and we'll see if she can float/
throw out the retard, and they won't be rockin' the boat
McArdle must love that song!
Here's my modern yiddish curse on her: May she have an ectopic pregnancy, a regular pregnancy, back labor, an episiotomy, trouble breast feeding, and the usual eight years in the germ swamp that is young children *without health care*.
You're still a nicer person than me, Aimai. Because I would have added "and may her kid have a serious disability, preferably one that will make all the other upper-class mothers in her neighborhood question her prenatal choices". After all, George Will discovered his small, pinched version of "communatarianism" after his kid was born with Down's. Hard cheese on the McArdle offspring, sure, but at least it will have the security of growing up in the Neocon bubble.
or engaged in dangerous sports
Yeah, like risking their lives to take Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. And then there was that day called...I can't remember, but it had a "D" in it, I think. Happened in June of '44. That kind of dangerous behavior cost some of those old folks their limbs, their eyesight, the ability to walk. Stupid old people.
And they say they did it to save the world from fascism. I don't believe it. They just had to engage in the most extreme sports they could find. After all, the early '40s were a pretty boring time.
The only thing worse than a Republican is a Looneytarian. Most people who read Rand in their teens eventually grow up and recognize that Objectivism is a truly rancid ideology.
And then there are those who never grow up...
.
sglover: Arthur Silber doesn't suck either.
Imagining her on a lifeboat. With a porcupine. Surrounded by the sharks that have come because of the old and sick she threw overboard. Best daydream I've had in months.
I don't know how many people got Herr Doktor's Somalia as Libertarian paradise reference. Soon after the Atlantic Monthly (RIP) was murdered and sent to hell, they ran an article arguing without the least bit of irony that Somalia, with it's lack of government, was proving the validity of Libertarian philosophy, those pesky warlords notwithstanding. Of course they were right, just not in the way they meant it. Those pesky warlords are the inevitable consequence of Libertarian philosophy in action. Somalia's not quite there though. They'll have to let go of all that care and respect for their elders crap before they really have it made.
I really wish these libertarians would invest their solipsitic blind faith in a more entertaining god-replacement. Can we get them interested in Freemasonry?
According to McCardle's chirpy soul-sister on CNN last week, we should "be careful what we ask for" before demanding product-safety inspections from China, because if we start prices at Wal-Mart will go up and that would be "tragic". Unlike, for instance, brain-damaged little kids.
They'll find nothing tragic about brain-damaged kids; it just means more libertarian votes when the addled tykes turn 18.
Well, what sgover said. Some libertarians care about things like (being against) untrammelled executive power and unjust wars. (So do some liberals.) I've borrowed from here and taken to putting the "g" in front of whatever philosophy the Reynoldses and McArdles practice.
Just went next door to find my 97 year mother in law bleeding all over herself after she bumped her arm. How dare she! I had other plans today besides bandaging her up and calling the doctor. What a nuisance!
I actually think it's Cute that young people think they will not have to care for sick old people or become sick old people themselves.
Aren't they Cute! Selfishness and narcissism are so Cute!
She's extolling the virtues of torture now. The ugliness goes deep.
Hattie, if she hadn't been such an ardent flapper back in her youth, surely doing opium with Al Jolson and whatnot, maybe she'd be doing something productive with her life these days, like working in a salmon cannery, instead of clogging up the hospitals with her icky bloody accidents.
Or better still, she could have died gracefully on the evening of her retirement from the workforce. Now THAT would be a good libertarian.
Logan's Run: Libertarian paradise.
Renew, Megan, renew!
The reason I've always found anarchism more intellectually respectable than libertarianism is that anarchism has to actually think about what a world with no rules would look like. Libertarians can blithely assert that the power of the free market will fix everything, so there's nothing to worry about.
Do you want to destroy the hold that corporations have over congress and the president? Simple. Organize and Demand progressive legislation from some of these corporations and do not buy from them until they get the GOP to get congress to enact this legislation.
If you want to put an end to the Republiklan party, then
Send this letter to the Republican party now! Also put this on your web page so others can see it.
Copy and paste the letter below and email it directly to info@gop.com the Republican Party and get 2 friends to send this letter and have those 2 friends get 2 friends to send it and so on. Thank you. Drop me a message to info@dmocrats.org with the subject Done after you have sent the email.
Hello
Get your Republican party to end the war in Iraq, with Bush and Cheney resigning, and until you do we stop buying televisions, refrigerators, stoves, ovens, dishwashers, dvd players, stereo equipment, light bulbs from one of your party's major contributors and War contractors General Electric Corporation ( 203 373 2211 ) who cannot afford to lose a large sector of the publics business and money.
Get your Republican party to remove the FICA taxable income cap and tax all of a person's income for social security purposes and enact HR 676 Single payer universal health care into law and repeal Medicare Part D and place the prescription drug benefit in Medicare Part B covering 80 percent of all medication with no extra premiums, no extra deductibles, no means tests, no coverage gaps, and completely remove the means test to Medicare Part B and until you do, we will not buy consumer products and prescription drugs from one of the biggest pharmacy chains and GOP contributors in the country, Rite Aid, who cannot afford to lose a large sector of the publics business and money.
Get your Republican party to enact a $10 an hour minimum wage, and until you do, we will not go to the following restaurants and GOP contributors Wendy's, Outback Steakhouse, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and Dominos Pizza who cannot afford to lose a large sector of the publics business and money.
Get your Republican party to enact into law Universal vote by mail with paper ballots counted by civil servants with civil servants registering voters and keeping track of registrations, and until you do, we will not buy any GOP contributor Dell computers or monitors or go to the following restaurants and GOP contributors Wendy's, Outback Steakhouse, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and Dominos Pizza who cannot afford to lose a large sector of the publics business and money.
Get your Republican party to get congress to pass and enact a law legalizing abortions from conception to six months, and to nine months when the life of the mother appears threatened, and until you do we stop doing business with two of your biggest contributors Dominos Pizza and Curves for Women Health Clubs.
Signed,
Libertarian: Former Republican without the fundie aftertaste.
Libertarian: former liberal who forgot about social justice.
Commenting by HaloScan
