Politics is interesting. The two ideals of personal freedom and social justice may be hard to reconcile. One problem is “to ‘take’ from the rich and distribute to the poor” juxtaposed with The Ayn Rand/John Birch/Cleon Skousen/Glenn Beck ideas.

In Norway we have a great example of social justice. When oil was discovered on the continental shelf, the Norwegian Labor Party (in power at the time) decided that the potential oil riches were for everyone. In order to “force” Big Oil to accept 78% tax, Norway founded a 67% government owned oil company; Statoil.

The oil wealth has not been squandered, it is invested in order to support future generations. “The Government Pension Fund of Norway” is forecasted to reach 500 billion USD at the end of 2010, and 800 billion USD at the end of 2014. (We are 4.7 million Norwegians.)

Wealth comes from natural resources or human inventiveness. Why not apply a more laissez-faire attitude towards innovations, and apply social justice (yes; even socialism) towards what nature provides?

Couldn’t we debate that in a civil manner?

The Scylla and Charybdis polarization benefits only “he who wants contention”, and methinks we need The Spirit.

Thank you for the clarifications. I think we both agree that the comparison is a little of a stretch, but I would say that Lewis is probably involved for the same reason in the health care debate as he was in the Civil Rights Era–he cares about his people. I do think that the fact that African Americans are doubly more likely not to be insured IS an EQUALITY issue, but will concede that much of the problem has to do with class as well. My point about greed is that there needs to be something to try and temper this horrible force in society and aside from true religion, I don’t think there is any other entity capable of doing it besides the government. I worry much more about greedy businessmen than I do about greedy politicians because greedy business interests are the ones that most influence the political process in a self-interested way. One thing that bothers me about conservative rhetoric in general is that it anthropomorphizes government as an almost soulless vampire. Government is made up of people that make choices. Some of them might be greedy and power hungry, but some of them are just trying to help and serve people the best that they know how. I get a distinct feeling that this is Obama’s position–agree with him or not. Government in itself isn’t bad, bad government is bad. But bad government doesn’t always necessarily equal government policies that an individual disagrees with.

Government itself is filled with greed, but it also has power. Greed combined with power is very dangerous.

though people of color are by far the people that suffer the most from a lack of quality health coverage in this country.

This happens quite often. If you look at the percentage of uninsured African-Americans 19.1% compared to whites at 10.8%, it would seem as if there many more African-Americans without insurance. But, if you look at the actual numbers, African-Americans have 7.3 million uninsured compared to whites with 21.3 million uninsured. (source: census.gov) When you compare the actual numbers of people, would you still agree that “people of color are by far the people that suffer the most”?

The problem with this is more attention and resources tend to head in the direction of the larger percentage. This happens also when you look at poverty in the inner cities compared to someplace like Appalachia. The inner city youth tend to get the majority of the attention and resources, while many haven’t even heard of Appalachia or the poverty there.

I don’t believe I have distorted anything. What I meant to show, and I think I did, that Beck was not displaying misplaced anger do to an ignorance of history. Dan’s above comment (#50) insinuates that Beck is wrong historically. It is historically correct that Congressman Lewis is a famous Civil Rights activist, but does that mean we can equate Civil Rights and health insurance reform on the basis that Lewis was a famous Civil Rights activist? I believe you agree with me on this point.

I think you are right that connoting the urgency and necessity of the Civil Rights Movement with the health care debate might be a little bit of a stretch

I think you just distorted a distortion. I think you are right that connoting the urgency and necessity of the Civil Rights Movement with the health care debate might be a little bit of a stretch–though people of color are by far the people that suffer the most from a lack of quality health coverage in this country. Yes, everyone has access to medical care in the emergency room, but that doesn’t do anything for the woman who might have been diagnosed with breast cancer much earlier if she had health insurance. People only go to the emergency room when health problems have become so bad they cannot cope with them anymore. That is bad health practice. Health insurance is a class equality issue of major importance.

Beck only uses the history that benefits his own point of view. For example, he uses Thomas Paine’s clarion call to use common sense, but ignores completely the fact that he was one of the most radical men of his age–if not an outright atheist than a Deist.

Part of the problem is that greed infringes on people’s rights more than anything the government could possibly do.

The social contract that our government has with us is to protect our rights. There is a fine line between protecting rights and infringing on rights. The bigger a government gets the higher the chance is that it will cross that line.