Socialized Medicine

[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What concerns me most, however, is the harm that socialized defense will do to the nation's character. Socialized defense not only will be an economic and humanitarian disaster -- it will undermine the freedom, responsibility, and independence of ordinary Americans.
Socialized defense represents a giant leap beyond the major middle class entitlement program, Social Security. Social Security likewise promotes an unhealthy dependency on government (and unjustly taxes current workers to pay for older citizens' retirements), but at least it allows recipients to spend their retirement checks according to their own interests and priorities.

In sharp contrast, under a regime of socialized defense, a person's choice of self-defense, enemies, response to perceived threats-- even lifestyles -- will be controlled by the government. You think security firms are bureaucratic, impersonal, and non-responsive? Just wait until any politician creates a defense force for the entire United States! Furthermore, under Social Security, it is possible to maintain the fiction that each recipient has earned his or her payment. With socialized defense, on the other hand, the militarist nature of the program will be unavoidable. The result will be to spread across the nation as a whole the same demoralizing culture of war that afflicts the beneficiaries of the imperialist state.
As with all national programs, the real goal is to replace individual freedom and responsibility under the control of a political elite. Such a system of government inevitably produces subjects, not citizens.
If Americans still believe in the fundamental principles on which this country was founded -- liberty, self-reliance, and limited government -- they must resist the siren song of socialized defense.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm sure you feel just as strongly with the FYP, too, right? If not, you're a hypocrite.

[/ QUOTE ]

Since health care can be administered one person at a time, but the country can only be defended as whole, your FYP is as asinine as the majority of your posts.

[/ QUOTE ]



This is so wrong on so many levels it's ridiculous.

First, it presents defense as some sort of binary, a fixed quantity. Either you are defended or you aren't. This is clearly not the case. There are all sorts of threats, and your defense against any particular one of them may be better or worse than your defense against others. Further, you can never be 100% "defended" absolutely.

Secondly, it totally ignores the fact that defense, like any other economic activity, is *allocated*. Men and materiel CAN and almost always ARE distributed unevenly. Further, strategy often leaves certain parts of a country undefended on purpose - yet other parts of the country continue to be defended.

[Copernicus]

What does collaboration and being an economically useful pawn have to do with national defense? Hitler could have taken Switzerland whenver he wanted.

[ShakeZula06]

[ QUOTE ]
Hitler could have taken Switzerland whenver he wanted.

[/ QUOTE ]
lol

[Copernicus]

Your usual productive comment. I see you havent changed any in your absence.

Swiss history from Swiss business

"The reason Germany spared its tiny neighbor to the south was because Switzerland proved much more useful as an independent state than as a satellite. The Swiss made many useful weapon components (aluminium for the Luftwaffe, spark plugs for jeeps taken from the Russians, timing devices for bombs, among other things), and thus their factories were not bombed every night. The Swiss National bank bought gold from the Reichsbank, the Reichsbank was given Swiss francs in exchange, and used them to buy cobalt, nickel and tungsten from the other “neutral” countries. The Turks, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish, who were all under heavy pressure from the Allies not to accept direct gold payment from the Reichsbank, then exchanged the Swiss francs for gold. The problem was that the German gold came from the Belgian National bank reserves (not from concentration camps as some sensationalists would have it) and the neutrals knew it. Finally, the Swiss allowed trains to carry food and non-weapon supplies from Germany to Italy, with dozens of trains every day on their way to Africa. But did Switzerland have any other choice? Probably not. Totally surrounded by the Axis, most of its coal supply came from Germany every week, and all of its exports had to go through Axis controlled territory. For a landlocked country with no natural resources, this meant the Swiss had to work out some form of accomodation with their neighbors. The problem is that the postwar generations have been raised to believe that it was the Swiss army, and not the country’s usefulness to the Germans, that protected it from the wrath of war. The Swiss are now coming to terms with this part of their history, as for example the people of France and Japan have. "

[ShakeZula06]

I'm not doubting that swiss business played a factor. Invading Switzerland would have been very difficult given their geography. That's a big reason why Switzerland is neutral so often.

[Copernicus]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not doubting that swiss business played a factor. Invading Switzerland would have been very difficult given their geography. That's a big reason why Switzerland is neutral so often.

[/ QUOTE ]

Geography is no defense against the Luftwaffe. They could have leveled all of Switzerland's key cities in days if it were beneficial.

[mosdef]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm not doubting that swiss business played a factor. Invading Switzerland would have been very difficult given their geography. That's a big reason why Switzerland is neutral so often.

[/ QUOTE ]

Geography is no defense against the Luftwaffe. They could have leveled all of Switzerland's key cities in days if it were beneficial.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just like they easily overran London!

[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm not doubting that swiss business played a factor. Invading Switzerland would have been very difficult given their geography. That's a big reason why Switzerland is neutral so often.

[/ QUOTE ]

Geography is no defense against the Luftwaffe. They could have leveled all of Switzerland's key cities in days if it were beneficial.

[/ QUOTE ]

And the iraqi insurgents have no defense against the US Air Force.