Second Verse, Same as the First!

Chet's earlier post reminded me of something I wrote (almost three years ago now) during the Social Security reform debacle called Oh, So Now They Like Darwin, cheekily referencing that within the heads of Bush conservatives is generally found a co-existence of a firm aversion to evolution and a rabid support of the concepts underlying social Darwinism, i.e. survival of the fittest. I went back and dug out this post, and it's actually amazing how few tweaks were required to make it applicable to the debate over government-sponsored healthcare:

The Bush administration's primary argument for Social Security reform against SCHIP is an impending fiscal crisis the cost, but behind the (disputed) economic motivation, there lies an ideological impetus that drives the entirety of the president’s grand vision of an "Ownership Society." Stephen Moore, the author of Bullish on Bush: How George W. Bush’s Ownership Society Will Make America Stronger, describes the intent to reform Bush's economic philosophy, evident in such policy proposals as reforming Social Security by privatizing accounts, as a fundamental shift "from an entitlement society to an ownership society." In the Bushies' lexicon, ownership is good, and there's no dirtier word than entitlement.

…If the president has his way, that picture will be of a political landscape marked with the sign: Every man for himself. (Quite a peculiar position for a man whose entire life has been dictated by inherited privilege and family connections, one might dryly note, but that is a discussion for another day.) And it is, to be sure, not an unexplored position by the legions of conservatives advocating the dismantling of Social Security against universal healthcare who came before him. There is a sense among these privileged men that one gets what one deserves in life, and, looking at them, wishing them a fate as ugly as their politics, sometimes one can only hope that they are right—the pricks. But fate, or luck, is a very different thing than hard work, and they're happy to tell you that they believe with a little hard work, anyone can be a productive member of their magnificent Ownership Society.

Now, I don’t want to get into a whole Marxist discussion about the means of production here, but what these insufferable, fatcat, classist wankers seem never to grasp is that if you want to live in a capitalist society that gives you the opportunity to get insanely rich, then we can't all be wealthy. And if you want to be the kind of person who doesn't pump your own gas, or make your own sandwiches, or clean your own house, or manicure your own fingernails, or drain your own dog's anal pouches, then there are going to have to be people who fill all those jobs. Most of them are professional, hard-working people who put in at least 40 hours a week, or more, and even still, many of them won't earn enough money to save as much as they’ll need in their retirement have either employee-subsidized healthcare benefits or access to affordable private health insurance…

People who honorably dedicate their time, energy, and talents to jobs that might not pay well [or offer health insurance] are indeed entitled to something—to not have worked their whole lives only to find themselves poverty-stricken in old age live their whole lives on the edge of a precipice, hoping that nothing goes wrong, nothing happens to them or their kids that could result in a loss of absolutely everything for which they've worked in the blink of an eye, just to pay medical bills. I don't think that's asking for much, in exchange of a lifetime of providing able-bodied service to their chosen vocation.

They're entitled to that much, and I think we are all obligated to provide it. It's called a social conscience, and I know the concept isn't all that popular in the Beltway, but maybe someone could give the Prez a heads-up and see if maybe it doesn't sound to him kind of like the compassion junk his favorite philosopher was always yapping about.

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That was originally published on January 18, 2005—and my feeling that blogging the Bush administration is like one interminable Mad Lib has never been stronger.