Success is a choice? Please tell me you aren't serious. Some of success is indeed a choice. But to make so blatant a statement ignores pretty much all of reality. - Poor people often do not have access to adequate nutrition, stunting their development mentally and sometimes physically. - Poor people often have one parent, no parent, no home, etc. NOT BY THEIR CHOICE which leads to emotional instability, mental inconsistency, etc. - Poor people don't have money to get the Sylvan extra education system, or go to private schools, or prep schools, or attend the fancy colleges and get multiple degrees. - Poor people often don't get adequate health care, leading to a variety of issues. - Poor people are often forced to live in unsafe or unclean conditions, again leading to a variety of issues. - Poor people most of the time don't have the opportunity to network with the business elite or social elite which can make or break a business with their connections. Is this true of all poor people? Certainly not. Some are just lazy or choose not to be anything but poor. And if they're happy then who cares? But I certainly hope in your heart of hearts you don't really feel that way about your common man/woman. It would be pretty disappointing...But alas, I guess sometimes money is really the deity that some people worship.
So this comes around to the question that asks if the federal government has an obligation to fully feed, clothe, shelter and provide healthcare to every individual within it's boundries. Or, does the federal government have an obligation to merely assist and/or otherwise determine that there is equal opportunity for people within its borders to have these things and people can detrmine what tey want for themselves. There's a difference. As an example in this thread, is there an obligation for the federal government to mandate all people have health insurance and further mandate that if people are unable to afford it or make less than $8/hr then a small portion of the population will be forced to provide it for those people?
None of that stuff matters. There are many many stories of people going from rags to riches, people defeat themselves when they limit themselves. next you're going to tell me that people joining gangs and doing drugs isn't their fault either.
Perhaps so - but I was referring, as noted in my earlier post, to people under college age. I have some inklings as to why it's being made mandatory but do not have facts to back it up. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree but I thank you for taking the time to discuss it civilly without making rash, hyperbolic comments. It's almost impossible now-a-days to get people to discuss an issue with respect let alone the sky high dream of getting people to compromise their views even an iota. Sometimes it's hard for people to remember that this isn't a game and we're all on the same team.
What do you think the founding fathers would have thought about this? Let's say there are five families who have five farms. One family gets up earlier, works harder and we will even say just go luckier and had far superior crops and were "wealthy" in terms of how much food they had. What if the other four families were morons and lazy and their crops sucked? Would the founding fathers want to FORCE the first family to give them food? Not in a million years, they would have wanted to help the other families out of their sense of morality but they would have fought to keep from being forced to do so. Poverty isn't a choice for children, but I see people using food stamp cards who are talking on their cell phones while their children are playing their portable video games. I WANT A PORTABLE VIDEO GAME. When I pay over 500 dollars in federal tax every two weeks I should be able to have one but I tend to try and prioritize my purchases. Oh yeah, on a personal note my parents were divorced when I was 4. My dad never had a job for more than two months out of a year. If not for my grandfather's garden and foodstamps my poor mother would have had a hard time feeding us when we were children. She went to school and worked as much as she could. We were very very poor.
I agree. There is no way the founding fathers wanted a system of socialism. They themselves knew that there were various classes of people, and their goal was to create a system of government free of tyranny and government intrusion and religous intrusion into people's lives.
The founding fathers didn't even know of socialism as it wasn't really around in force till many years later. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism They were mostly trying to escape an oppressive monarchy-based society. So if you tell me that they didn't want a king or queen, then yes, I would probably agree that was true..for the most part. I don't mean to direct this specifically at you, BP, but I'm always amused when people say what the founding fathers wanted or didn't want. Because the founding fathers were not a homogeneous blob that all agreed on the same ideals and there were very dramatic differences between their lines of thinking. In addition, there are often many things that run very counter to what the founding fathers believed in "generally speaking" that are in place today, soo...hmph. BTW, the founding fathers also would've been frightened of airplanes, tanks, etc. So let's get rid of those while we're at it.
There's no disrespect taken. However, I'm an avid student of history and you'd be surprised at how some of our founding fathers lived. The point I was making is that this country was set up so people could live as free individuals and apart from government control over their lives in nearly all aspects of their lives. I also realize this is no longer our founding father's country, but the romantic side of me tells me that when we turn to government controlling legislation such as Congress and the President forcing everybody to buy health insurance whether they want to or not and then telling various small segments of the population they will be conscripted to pay for certain others I always remember that it completely vilates the very principles we were founded upon. You can say it's foolish thinking as we live in the here & now, and maybe I'd have to agree with that, but it's to me a damn shame how far we've slid from the foundations we were started upon.
I don't necessarily think it foolish thinking. Again, I think I know why this mandatory insurance is coming about and my hunch is that it's a requirement by some in order to pass any legislation. And by some I mean third parties outside of government. Maybe not, but just my hunch. I'm also a great student of law and their origins in colonial America, but somewhat restricted in the scope of subjects I investigate. The context of many of the founding father's ideas and beliefs is fascinating and I think some of them are still appropriate. I just don't think there is always as much consensus as people seem to think, e.g. religion and government. That's the only reason I brought it up - not to necessarily say that the majority of founding fathers wouldn't have supported your position.
On that thought I would whole heartedly disagree. The founding fathers may have built the Constitution on compromise, but in no way, shape or form would they have approved the current actions of Congress and I think would find them treasonous.
The term "socialism" may not have existed, but the ideals were well known by 1789. That'd be both the time of the writing of the Constitution and the "liberty, equality, fraternity" revolution in France. Let's just say Madison got it right and move on. The Constitution is what they all agreed upon. The differences are clear though. You can look at the slavery issue alone... it was banned in Massachusetts by 1789, and the 3/5ths compromise and the banning of the importation of slaves written in the Constitution are the tip of that iceberg. As a student of history, you might comment on the PA constitution of the time.
