whatever happened to the common good...

[acroyear]

Frank Schaeffer: How the Right and the Left Destroyed the Public Option:

Now in the USA we have the worst of all possible worlds: a leftist/libertarian addiction to personal private space, in which no one is allowed to tell anyone else what they should do, combined with this weird anti-Christian "Christian" right wing notion that everything -- even trains, the post office, our infrastructure and medicine, and now even a big chunk of the military (via "contractors") -- must be run for a for-profit motive.

The left, the right, the secular community and the religious community have denied the best of their own heritage when it comes to America. The problem of not getting a public option for health-care reform relates to a philosophical shift in our culture wherein everything has to be justified on the basis of profit and/or privacy. Result: there is no concept of public space at all. Result: idiots shout "socialism" about common sense solutions to our problems that -- very ironically -- the Medici princes of Florence and the Puritans would have all agreed needed to be matters of common public space.

Until Americans -- left and right, atheist and believing -- begin to take another look at where this road of absolutist privacy combined with absolutist profit leads we'll be stuck with the health care that's a mess, trains that don't work and for-profit lunacy: deified individualism.

[...]

We need to get back to the idea of civic space, and public works, not just in health-care but in all sectors of our economy. It's not a question of being anti-capitalist; rather, it's a question of rediscovering a more narrowly defined capitalism that thrives because of a thriving public space.

In the 18th century, it was called Enlightened Self-Interest.

BTW, one of the major factors for the ECW was the fact that much of the commons land was being sold by the crown to wealthy noblemen for development, putting farmer's livestock (and livelihood) in danger.

Under many a religious war is a social disconnect, especially between rich and poor, lurking as the root cause.  Religion made it easy to rally a group to fight, but the reason for fighting was a perceived injustice irrelevant to religions.

Comments

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

Thought I'd post the article on the Redskins forum to see how well it would go over. As expected, it went over like a lead balloon, since it is filled with conservative - libertarian types.

http://www.extremeskins.com/showthread.php?t=295356

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

well, for the most part those are obvious jerks (my one thought about Nebraskans not paying for New Yorkers was, "lemme guess, you are one who still wants to keep "Under God" after "One Nation". forget about that "One Nation" part, did you?).

But one did have a point about the Medici reference, about the rich choosing to give monuments to the public, though he could have pulled better history out of it to support his point. Many of the National Parks and other nature reserves started out as mass purchases by the retiring (and suddenly philanthropic) robber barons like Rockefeller and Carnegie. These types purchased the land, established the refuge and infrastructure, and then turned them over to the federal government or state governments.

Now in many cases the real development on them that make them actually manageable and accessible were still public works projects done during the FDR era, like the steps that allow one to climb Moro Rock in Sequoia National Park. This same funding era also produced most of the roads, visitors centers, museums, offices, and much more, without which these parks would have far fewer visitors. Public investment in infrastructure is still necessary, regardless of how it started.

And he also ignored the original author's original sentiment: these rich of today WON'T be investing in public works, because there's no profit in it. The whole point of the article was that the profit-motive drives every thought in the business-Right today. Inherent philanthropy has ceased to exist - donations are made by the Rich not out of the love and goodness of their heart or even a moral religious obligation to tithe. They are made for the tax deduction, carefully calculated out by software every year to maximize the take-home and the bracket.

One should ask this gy, the next time he drives to Baltimore for the next Redskins/Ravens game, who really paid for that interstate that allows him to make the trip in 30 minutes rather than the stoplight-ridden hour-long trip from hell that US29 or US1 would have given him.

And what was the party of the President who put it in action...

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

I also thought it was amusing someone was calling out "The Big Dig" as a financial boondoggle, when it was the private contractors who caused a lot of the problems, including a ceiling collapse that killed a person.