Thinking about security

This thought came at Friends Meeting today... so called conservative politicos really push a doctrine based on rugged individualism.

Part of that doctrine is people can only acheive their potential if things like regulations got out of the way. Free market is preferable to controlled economy, taxes slow economic growth, and having to worry about externalities (pollution, migrant labor etc) threatens growth. If they're not with us, they're against us; thus we proceed with the coalition of the willing.

The other side of that coin is that factors that threaten our prosperity are being dragged down by people who don't make the quality of choices we make... so they tell us that social security will collapse if we don't have individual retirement accounts; universal health care doesn't control for moral hazzard; the bankrupt or unplanned pregnant, got themselves into their situation, don't look to the goverment for hand out, they need to learn personal responcibility... and so on. This the government the US voted for in November.

But Hobbes had a phrase to describe this life of rugged individualism: nasty, brutish and short. It happens all the time, in the form of chronic disease, poverty, bankruptcy. It was sadly magnified in New Orleans when the most vulnerable were abandoned to the city.

We're witnessing the outcome of the kind of government elected in November... and even back to the GOP revolution in '94. We're starving the beast of government programs... like FEMA, by spending gross amounts for a trumped up war, we're cutting domestic programs... like FEMA, and we're cutting taxes in the face of exploding deficits.

So if a philosophy of individualism has left us exposed, what's the alternative? The alternative is philosphy of mutual need... of social security, universal health care, real international coalitions for conflicts that don't involve oil. We need each other to deal successfully with personal and natural disaster. We can't fear free riders and moral hazzard from providing our communities with real aid, and real protection.

As much as we're going to hear about the swelling of contributions, what New Orleans needed to avoid catastrophe was government aid, the aid the Bush administration has been ignoring since 2001 at least. This goes for our health care, this goes for our social security, and this has to do with homeland security. Charity cannot fully do what government can, and in this case, ought to have done.

This means Democrats have a greater responsibility to expose the Orwellian joke of GOP politics... terrorism is not about Iraq, it is not about about the patriot act; individual health accounts will not save health care, private accounts will not save social security. Voters needs to get real and get skeptical of what they're told. I'm not voting for GOP individualism, I'm voting for liberal communities, and acknowledge that the smartest thing we can do to prevent disaster is spread risk: the tool for that is government. we have every right to expect that from our government and they failed.