(I chose the Option.)

Watching those two videos in succession it occurred to me that George Bush may have been the ultimate anarchist and simultaneously the best argument against anarchy. His anarchy was the anarchy of the soul. In him the forces of his nature rioted against one another like some WTO street confrontation. On one side was arrayed the uniformed and disciplined ranks of civil order, in his case his Christianity. On the other side were the myriad masked passions of an injured psyche. Like any mob the individual members might have their decency but en masse they form an angry and dangerous animal. But George was President of the United States, not some part-time student activist or otherwise under employed youth. He held the primary scepter of civil authority and, shaking with the chaos inside him, threw it to the ground and gave his answer to everything and everyone – the finger.

We all suffered under him and so much so that it is clear what are the consequences of abandoning leadership and embracing anarchy. If there had been ten thousand George Bushes then they might have dissipated their energy fighting amonst themselves thus causing little harm, but there was only one Il Duce and he was free to trash everything. And the lesson: “What is left after the rule of anarchy except to rebuild?”

All of which brings me to your questions. Is health care a right? I say that we can choose to make it so if we wish or we can make it something else – a privilege, a perquisite, a reward. What kind of world shall we rebuild? The real question is “Do we have the strength of will to choose or are we too frightened of ourselves to act at all anymore?”

Regarding our words if our oaths have no meaning then “How are we to order our lives together?” Without accepting responsibility for what we say how can we combine our efforts to any end – good or bad?

Lastly “the rich” are a luxury of a successful civilization. We are coming to the end of the serendipitous moment of success we call the Industrial Revolution. Without fossil fuel the machines, the chemicals and the leisure time to invent will go away. In the not too distant future a rich man will be someone who owns two donkeys. He may choose to sit in his front yard and admire his two possessions but if the rest of the village is hungry and needs to plow their common plots then some enterprising villain will strike a blow for “progressive taxation” and relieve this rich man of his largess.

And that leads me to my suggestion for a better question. As you can see my theme is that the spirit of this time is renewal, rebuilding. So the more compelling question might be “What vegetables will I plant next Spring?”

(Thanks so much Obey for asking such great questions.)

Everyone is equal. No human being is better than any other human being. So:

1. Yes.
2. No.
3. Yes.
4. There's no ethical justification for the "rich" in the first place. And, once you accept the terms justifying inequality, you cannot win the argument for equality.

You need to begin this argument at #4, not at #1. Admit that the social structure and rules are accepted as discriminatory and unfair. So now, how to you deal with that when your social structure starts to collapse?

Obey: I'd gladly pay you Tuesday, for a cheeseburger today.

And if I don't have the money Tuedsay, could you help me get a bailout grant?

Tomorrow, or Tuesday (thank you Wimpy), I am hoping to blog on why evangelicals, et. al. think profit (ooopsie -BELIEVE) profit is more important than being Thy Brother's Keeper or any of that really cool stuff Jesus, the Christ preached...and practiced. It consumes me, to tell you the truth. And it all plugs into The Family (the Fellowship) and All That Jazz.)
Thank you for expanding the dialogue, Obey. I have thought that the CAfe has gotten way stale on health care issues, way too narrow, and you have just expanded the issue.

(Fart if ya gottem.)

1. Yes. It is currently provided for the elderly, who could never afford it because they all have pre-existing conditions; it is also provided for the poor through Medicaid. Those who have been left out are those who the insurance companies have priced out of the market. A Public Option, or preferably Single-Payer system would make insurance affordable; and anything beyond that should be subsidized by taxes.

2. Yes. Rich people can afford better houses, food, cars, etc. As long as everyone is equally entitled to good routine and normal care, rich people should be able to get insurance that would cover face-lifts and liposuction.

3. Yes, we are surrounded by morally reprehensible believers. They are morally reprehensible because the beliefs themselves are devoid of moral effort. No thought; no judgement; just negative emotions. The moral reaction is to vote them out of office and keep them out.

4. Soak the rich? A person who makes multi-millions can have everything he or she needs and still have plenty of discretionary funds, plus higher taxes and still have a huge cushion left over. They live in our country too, and benefit from having an educated populace and one with a public health system that works to keep all of our society a better place. Even though the obscenely wealthy would prefer not to mingle with the hoi palloi, it is a fact that we all cross paths in airports, malls, restaurants (the rich are not the waiters and waitresses), and swine flu is not a snob.

What is happening now is soaking the middle class. There is no reason for a cut-off on payments for Social Security for example. The mantra goes out every couple of years about how Social Security is going broke. The percentage of income for someone who is making $60,000 a year compared to $1,000,000 a year betrays a perverse soaking of the middle class.

I know your question was rhetorical, but when in the world, has the "rich" ever gotten "soaked?"

Going for the bonus question in the hopes of extra credit cheezeburgerz!!!

Where liberty is the right of the individual to flourish and equity (social justice) is the right of society to collectively flourish, is the relationship between individual liberty and social equity zero-sum or is it possible that each can enhance the other?

The "Don't Tread on Me" signs that are so ubiquitous at the town hall meetings represent those that feel they shouldn't be asked to pay for somebody's health care if they haven't harmed, and owe nothing, to them. It is the possessive individualism that believes liberty is self-interest that should trump collective social egality, or justice, because it reduces or denies their liberty. That is the zero-sum view. In order to win, someone else has to lose.

In my mind though, individuals do not exist in isolation where each of us is separate and complete. Rather, we exist in the context of interdependency in communities and society. We have seen that when each person attends only to their own self-interest, the whole of society is not included in their well-being (as is promised by free-market promoters). Eventually even those that benefited find their ability to flourish stops when the economy freezes, when others are too uneducated/sick to participate and when new technology and developments are underfunded and inefficient. Yet when society as a whole flourishes, each member is made better off and both culturally advance as budding Einsteins and farmers are healthy and free to produce quality food and new theories in science and technology.

Martin Luther King once said that injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. In a society where justice is denied to some, the liberty of all is reduced and eventually denied.

Cheezeburger worthy?