Note: this entry comes via Jessica N. Wood on Twitter.
You might be a progressive if you think it’s okay to mandate people to buy government health insurance, but think a mandate that they buy private insurance is immoral.
Previous entries in the “You’re a progressive if” series:
- on hating the label of “liberal” (justifiably so) but then insisting on being called the much more historically odious term: “progressive”
- on caring about future generations, some of the time
- on opposing waterboarding terrorists while championing partial-birth abortion
- on thinking society can preserving children’s health by taxing cigarettes and then outlawing smoking
- on wanting to preserve “open space” while wanting to take land for hundreds-of-miles-long swaths of giant wind turbines
- on restoring “faith in government” by forcing people to pay financial support to candidates they oppose and using tax money to help incumbents stay in power
- on assuming without question that government deserves the religious awe of faith
- on ad-hoc definitions of the size of government sums
- on thinking reducing CO2 will make the planet more green
- on wanting to require voluntarism and hike taxes for charity
- on no longer wanting an exit strategy, timetable for withdrawal, and definition of victory
- on thinking cap-and-trade is not a tax
- on excusing Vice Pres. Biden’s urging his families to stay off subways and trying to force everyone else on public transportation
- on wanting people to walk, jog or bike to work while believing that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant
- on favoring redistribution only when it doesn’t affect them
- on wanting to declare all slippery-slope arguments invalid while habitually engaging in argument ad hominem and setting up straw men
- on fearing that firemen entering a burning building could be endangered by secondhand cigarette smoke
- on not understanding why people laugh at their belief that if fewer people are purchasing a good, the solution is raise the price
- on putting freedom in scare quotes
- on taking issue with the GM bankruptcy deal on the grounds that the government winds up owning only 72.5 percent of the company
- on thinking that statutory rape is a very funny subject indeed if the child’s mother is a prominent Republican
- on wanting to impose everybody’s medical costs on taxpayers and then complaining about everybody’s medical costs being such a burden on society
- on not reconsidering cap-and-trade despite having no answer for criticism that gets to the very heart of the issue
- on expressly avoiding cost/benefit analyses of proposed new environmental regulations while seeking stringent cost/benefit analyses of elderly, infirm and handicapped patients with respect to healthcare costs
- on thinking the key to prosperity is just printing more money
- on advocating for the disabled to have the “right” to special elevators and access to buildings but not the right to life when their healthcare costs exceed the government formula
- on thinking that a free press would be ensured by a president establishing a commission on public media and independent reporting
- on inferring that everyone else is just as bought and paid for as they
- on being completely unable to fathom that some people love liberty for its own sake
- on being far more interested in an opponent’s funding than in trying to refute his argument
- on thinking a government health insurance plan that cannot be sued, cannot be charged with fraud, is exempt from antitrust laws, cannot guarantee a level of customer service, and can unilaterally alter its coverages without input from the consumer would constitute progress
- on stopping swearing and cursing long enough to condemn America for a loss of civil discourse
- on thinking that name-calling is actually substantive, successful argument
- on fear-mongering against the “religious Right” and then saying Jesus wants you to pay higher taxes and support Obama’s healthcare takeover
- on thinking that market competitions is only between private options (plural) and a government option
- on demonizing people instead of persuading them
- on going to hysterical lengths to demonize rather than to try to win the argument on the strength of ideas
- on thinking that people are too stupid to know what’s good for them and that only politicians can know what’s best for people
- on being able to find the sense in Biden’s boast of having saved and created hundreds of thousands of jobs during rising unemployment
- on seeking distance from progressivism’s roots in eugenics while championing the DDT ban that caused millions to die of malaria in Africa
- on thinking Big Macs should be taxed and regulated and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream should be subsidized
- on thinking former Pres. Bush still has the power to orchestrate a phony terrorism scare to help with the reauthorization of the Patriot Act
- on favoring economic policies that impoverish the poor if they keep the rich from getting richer, too
- on thinking that it’s a serious problem for 42 percent of death row inmates to be black, but not thinking there’s anything wrong for 36 percent of babies aborted to be black
- on believing that a person shouting “Allahu akhbar!” and gunning down U.S. soldiers and civilians is not a terrorist, but those tea party protesters are
- on thinking the fall of the Berlin Wall was no big deal
- on habitually deflecting the issue of the Fort Hood massacre being Islamic terrorism on U.S. soil
- on dogmatically insisting in the face of continued rising unemployment that Obama’s stimulus packages have created jobs
- on thinking that government bureaucrats in healthcare will be more responsible than government bureaucrats at Arlington
- on asserting that global warming is one of the worst catastrophes ever to face mankind but being exceedingly unhappy with 11 years of global cooling
