I was reading a statement, by a liberal woman, about how we need health care, and we need it now. The first thing I thought of was the argument that comes up with conservatives about everything that government helps us to do. They are worried about people gaming the system. They are worried about people like themselves.
In the "I got mine" paradigm, which, when you break it down, is key to policy-making in conservativeland, the issue of taxes and social spending has a consistent tone of "...but people who don't deserve, and haven't earned, the support will take advantage of it." Looking at conservatives, it is easy to tell why they're so afraid of government. In the "Leave a penny, take a penny" jar, they are the ones who see free money for the taking. They can't envision a world where that type of a solution actually works.
It's the same with Health Care, Immigration, Education and Taxes. Liberals, progressives, hell, even moderates of both stripes can see the value in a government that works for everyone. Conservatives are hell-bent on making sure that, whenever they get something, they don't have to share because "Nobody shared with them."
Look at it. Health care arguments - we'll have millions of illegal immigrants clogging the system, and us hard-working white folks won't be able to see a good doctor if those people "game the system."
Immigration - add that last argument to basically everything else, from taxes to jobs to public services.
Education - why should we reward poor people with good schools, what did they ever do for us?
Taxes - conservatives don't want taxes to pay for anything, because it is their money, not some poor sap who's gonna try to pay for having a baby on your dime...
These are the same people who use the legal system to justify everything. I would be interested in seeing the political stripes of ambulance chasers. If you look at the political process, on the Democratic (A.K.A. "Liberal") side, you see people who want to focus on issues, making a better life for everyone, sharing the wealth and reducing the attempts to eliminate the middle class. On the Republican side, it is all about how you can manipulate the media, and people, into promoting your policies. It is pure gamesmanship. The whole paradigm is part of their culture, and their governance is reflected in it. Conservativism is selfishness. Conservativism is anti-American. Conservativism is antisocial...maybe even sociopathic. And it works for so many people.
9/11 made this entirely clear. America was united, for a very brief time, with the rest of the world immediately following the attacks. We had an opportunity to grow as a society, to show our stripes. Unfortunately, those stripes are heavily conservative, and with conservatives in power, we did the selfish thing. It doesn't look very good, either, unless you got yours...
They are afraid of people gaming they system. They are afraid of people like themselves...greedy, self-serving and willing to take advantage of anything that is free for the taking. It's sad to watch.