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Health care is a basic human right. As such, everyone is entitled to care. We currently have a system where millions of people do not get care. Private health care will never address this problem because it's not in their interest to.


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This sort of thinking is anathema to the principles that America was founded on. And that's not an anarchist rant. Read some of Isaiah Berlin's work, particularly "Two Concepts of Liberty," which introduced (I believe) the ideas of positive and negative liberty.

I do think that the gov't should do something to help the poor get health-care, but casting it as a basic human right, in addition to being ludicrous, is scary and dangerous.

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Forget what I said about not engaging; I have to address this. This is another line of argument that the wingnuts use to skirt the real issue. I call it the "But That's Not America" argument. And it's not a real argument.

It's not consistent with the values of the Founders. Ok, for the sake of argument I'm going to let that go. Well, to answer, so frackin' what? It doesn't make any difference whether or not an idea is American or contrary to the values America was founded on. This is another trick the right uses. Just call something unAmerican. Then people won't think about the merits of what someone is saying. They'll just think about whether or not it's American, assuming American is good and unAmerican is bad, because that's the framework that's been given. It's just silly.

Thankfully, as I already said, most Americans are smarter than to fall for that crap.

This is not dangerous. What's dangerous is reckless disregard for other human beings.