I'll take a start at one of the big ones. Everyone wants free medical coverage. But can we maintain our freedom if we give the government control of our health?
Cigarettes and alcohol, junk food and recreational drugs etc. could be completely banned or rationed in the name of maintaining the health of Americans. You could be told you can only see doctors in your area and which hospitals to go to. Is this acceptable? Not to me. Look at the overreach declaring guns a medical emergency, there is no limit to what they will do to get what they want. Look at the assisted suicide rate and the acceptance reasons for it.
Before you jump to the normal irrational response, the system is broken and I didn't know what actions it'll take to fix it. More government oversight? regulation of profit for the insurance industry? I didn't know, but I do know EVERYTHING our government does is wildly inefficient.
Everything involving humans is inefficient.
The most efficient thing we could do is die and then there would be no more problems to solve.
This is just to say that efficiency in not an end in itself.
If you have a system that is very efficient at delivering shitty outcomes, that's not a win.
And the kicker is that our current system ISN'T even very efficient...
It's possible that he is trying to shut down this conversation, especially if you are the one initiating it.
There are a couple of rules, I've learned when it comes to politics:
#1 - Everyone has an opinion, of which they are mostly ill-informed. It is called "the illusion of explanatory depth." We believe things that we cannot even explain, let alone intelligently rationalize to an informed interlocutor.
#2 - No one is interested in having their opinions forcibly changed through "friendly" debate. Real changes in opinions take place gradually over years, without coercion or soft pressure, but because of frequent exposure, familiarity and likeability to a discrepant source.
#3 - Despite rabid differences in tribal identification, most people agree on most things--if they could talk about them intelligently and not get triggered by hearing 'enemy' words and slogans.
#4 - The loudest, most extreme voices do not represent the majority in either party. Those are the outliers, the extreme 1-5%. Unfortunately, the media sensationalizes noise and so these extremists are depicted as being the most representative of the 'enemy' when they are far from it.
I appreciate the thoughtful response, but I think you are wrong about #2 when you say no one is interested in having their opinions challened. I'm eminently interested in having my opinions challenged through "friendly debate." I welcome it and appreciate it.
I think people who know their opinions are lazy and not likely to hold up to scrutiny are not interested in debate.
The Modern Left
Women’s Rights > Men’s Rights
Trans Rights > Women’s Rights
Homeless Rights > Tax Payer Rights
Illegal Immigrant Rights > Citizen Rights
Muslim Rights > Christian Rights
Criminal Rights > Law Abiding Rights
It’s all emotion based victim based politics
That's a strawman. Give me a tangible example of any of those.
What gets me is the fact that many on the left will decry systemic racism and state abuse of power, yet at every turn try to give the state MORE control and power… they’re like abuse victims who stay in the abusive relationship hoping that “this time it will be different.”
There are a couple of holes in this opinion.
1. Firstly, no one ever equated systemic racism solely with state power. In fact, the only way systemic racism ever has been combatted in this country is through state power. That’s what civil rights and voting rights legislation was all about. Without the imposition of (federal) state power, the South might well be living in Jim Crow apartheid.
2. Currently it is "conservatives" who are trying to centralize and expand state power through the theory of the unitary executive. All of this was spelled out in Project 2025, which is being followed point-by-point by the current administration and mostly being rubber stamped by the "conservative" SCOTUS.
Conservative is in quotation marks because, of course, there is nothing truly conservative about any of it.
