A possible list could include slavery, secession, Jim Crow, voter’s rights, women’s rights, child labor, and workplace safety. You could make a slightly longer list if you wanted, but it’s hard to deny the importance of these issues in terms of how they effected our democracy.

On each of the above issues, it was the liberal solution that proved to be the most just and fair and ultimately, the path our nation chose. In each and every case above, the conservative position was the wrong position and the position that was rejected by Americans. Often, as with slavery, the liberal solution was initially mocked, derided, and denigrated. Sounds familiar to today, doesn’t it? Prior to the Civil War, to be called an “abolitionist” was the ultimate ad hominem attack. Today, no decent person would publicly admit to anything other than the abolitionist position. However, eventually this country came to realize what the liberals had been saying since the founding of this country, that slavery was and is wrong. The conservative position was that of the slaveholder, that slavery was right and that slaves were not people, but property.

Similarly, in each of the above issues, the liberals have been on the right side of history and the conservatives on the wrong side. I cannot think of any major issue which defines us as a people on which the conservatives have not been consistently wrong. Why should we believe that now, after an unbroken history of 233 years of being wrong on every single major issue that has confronted our country, the conservatives are somehow now right?

I know that assessment will anger conservatives, but they are free to point out major issues on which the conservatives have been right and provided a solution which favored democracy. I’ll not hold my breath waiting.

This nation was founded upon liberal principles and when push comes to shove, we consistently fall back on our liberal heritage to solve our greatest problems. The conservatives are just pissed that have been proven wrong again.

Your statement about the Declaration and Constitution undercuts your premise and confirms mine.

By calling himself a “Conservative,” a Conservative identifies himself with the history behind that term and with the aristocratic currents that run throught that history. Words actually mean something, and adopting a name for ourselves reflects and, at the same time, influences our thinking.

The idea that the Declaration and Constitution are somehow fundamentally about economic rights is a case in point. In fact, I don’t recall economics being a core value in either of our founding documents, even though Conservatives always assume that they must be. In fact, I seem to recall that the phrase “life, liberty, and property” was specifically rejected for the Declaration because of its conservatism, its suggestion that property granted political powers that those without property–and those that WERE property (slaves)–lacked.

To a real American, property gives you no special political rights or qualifications. We are all created equal and are equal in the eyes of the law. America is Liberal.

“Now many will refute that “The insurance companies raise premiums and a ration care now.” With this I cannot disagree. But is taking the control we have ceded to our employer and handing it over to the federal government truly something that most individuals support? NO.”

That’s called “begging the question”. Would you want a million dollars IF you had to cut off your legs? Obviously not. Why do you assume that we’d be taking the control we have and “handing it over to the federal government”? And how do you know that people are clear just how much control the insurance companies have (funny how you almost never refer to the insurance companies in your comment at all — almost as if you wish to frame the debate as “me & my doctor” vs “me, my doctor and the government”, as if private corporations weren’t in between you and the doc already), and whether it would serve them to move that control to the government?

What if the framing you used for your poll was “Do you want a greedy corporate shark thinking of you as a source of profit, especially if you don’t pay your claims, or do you want your healthcare to be a boring, bureaucratic manner handled the same way ordering a replacement social security card might be, by people who don’t get a big, fat bonus by dumping the sickest policy-holders?” I bet you’d get some interesting results.

Here’s MY framing on it: healthcare costs money. Insurance companies skim money off the top and contribute nothing while dumping people into emergency care after bankrupting them. If Medicaid and Medicaire and SS have problems, it’s because of greed and corruption on the part of private companies gaming the system.

When you privatize prisons, you incentivize high prison populations. When you privatize healthcaare, you incentivize collecting dues and NOT paying out on claims.

Why do you right-wingers insist on presenting a pie-in-the-sky, they’re-only-here-to-help fantasy of corporations and contrasting it with a worst-case “IT CAN’T WORK” cartoon of government?

Medved doesn’t even seem to realize that his whole argument is based upon framing and assumptions — that you have to do what conservatives *always* do, which is to denigrate liberal efforts via the assumption of negative motivations. In other words, first you assume that the liberal is motivated by Bad Things, then you’re free to crap on their efforts as misguided and doomed to failure from the very beginning!

It’s why you have so many right-wing authoritarian idiots saying things like “Now you liberals can stop pretending to care about poor people.” Their worldview depends on assuming that everybody else is as big an asshole as they are.

(P.S. Republicans *are* assholes. Push the Van Jones Window!)

Conservatism as a movement and modern American Conservatives in particular believe that property–the wealth and social privilege that one inherits from one’s relatives (and ultimately from God)–is the only legitimate qualification for political power. Witness the current Supreme Cort case that seeks to guarantee the “personhood” and political rights of property that has been incorporated. Conservatives of the current stripe didn’t just lose the last two elections. They lost the Revolution and fled to Canada. (Ironic, eh?)

We need to remember that America is a Liberal nation, founded not on the theocratic absolutism of the Mayflower Colony or the aristocratic slave economy of Virginia, but on the principles of individual rights and freedoms that made Liberalism a force in later history. With the exception of Denmark, every European monarchy, including our ally, France, banned publication of our Declaration of Independence because it threatened every Conservative principle. The French friends and supporters of our Revolution were later instrumental in starting the French Revolution, and our example inspired liberal reforms in England.

Bottom line? You can’t be a Conservative and love America. Love it or leave it, I say. (Canada still has a Queen as head of state, don’t they?)

It has been reported that American TRAITOR cheney is back in the HOSPITAL using SOCIALIZED medicine for his spine (are they putting one in) This is news I didn’t think Right wingers were capable of a spine.

[Edited by Moderator: Wishing any violence to anyone is strictly prohibited on this site!]

We are first and foremost a nation of individuals. Free individuals who choose to either look to themselves and first, or to the government first, in looking for solutions to problems.

The government is useful in many ways and necessary but it can also be too burdensome, bloated and corrupt to efficiently perform and . Many individuals realize this and seek to limit the amount of money and control that has led to the concentration of power in the central government in Washington, D.C.

Why ‘progressives’ support ’single payer’ is beyond me. Citing Medicare as a ’successful’ program is absurd when you consider that it has been operating in the red, subsidized to an ever growing level by taxpayer dollars. For Medicare to remain viable, future generations will have to pay higher and higher taxes. Citing the ’success’ of other single-payer programs without mentioning the high tax burden places on individuals that support the system does not give us the whole story.

Americans need to have MORE, not less control over healthcare decisions and healthcare dollars in order to connect the consumer more directly with the cost of their care and the consequences of their decisions.

No matter what ‘progressives’ wish to believe about their fellow man, human nature has proved that self-interest and self-preservation motivate the human race and the power of the free, self-determining individual to adapt and create, TO CHOOSE, will more often PRODUCE OUTCOMES, PRODUCTS and SERVICES that will benefit all. Will they always succeed? No. But I will assert that they do so with greater success than any centralized government.

That is why the number of opponents to the Democrats plans are growing. What has been promised by the President is a fantasy and what is in the House Bill spells disaster of our economy.

Baucus’ bill saves money, but oops, it raises taxes on the middle class in order to subsidize those without insurance who cannot afford to pay.

That is a hard sell to the coal miner who works hard, has great health insurance benefits. Coal miners, steel workers and others who have hazardous occupations will NOT want to see their taxes raised ONE DIME.
Would the individual prefer to pay higher premiums or higher taxes? Which choice will give them the best access to the care and treatment?

Who does that individual trust more, the private sector, or the federal government?

Why would a ‘progressive’ individual, one who so adamantly demands that abortion and gay rights opponents ‘keep their hands off MY body’ and ’stay out of the bedroom’ support a plan for health care that will ultimately be forced, because of COSTS, to limit care and treatments OR raise our taxes, OR BOTH, thereby LIMITING THE INDIVIDUAL ECONOMIC FREEDOM that is at the core of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution?

Now many will refute that “The insurance companies raise premiums and a ration care now.” With this I cannot disagree. But is taking the control we have ceded to our employer and handing it over to the federal government truly something that most individuals support? NO.

President Obama wants to keep the system of employer based insurance while slowly moving us to single payer. Any other choice would be too ‘disruptive.’ Disruptive for whom? What is the risk to the individual if they were to be given sole authority over the dollars they would spend on their care?

Frankly, it is a risk I would be willing to take.

Well, it follows that if the right-wing corporation-friendly U.S. Supreme Court rules that a corporation is a person, then it seems likely that one day a corporation, instead of doling out millions to buy politicians, will run as a “person” for political office.

In fact, the President of the United States of America might someday be Microsoft, or GE, or AIG, or some other corporation “person,” with their “birth certificate” being the date of their incorporation in the United States.

This “person” would “self”-finance their “campaign,” essentially bypassing any need to stuff the pockets of a real person’s political campaign war chest.

HA!!, you might laugh, but this is the logical extension of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of corporate “personhood.” A “person” “born” in America, of a certain age and after meeting certain requirements (like being judged a “person”) can run for political office. So someday, there just might be a President Goldman Sachs. Hail to the Chief!!!