[zerospinboson]

In the arena of charity, which started the thread, reports concerning the relative charitable giving of conservatives and liberals appear to show that conservatives give more to charity than liberals, primarily because liberals believe that their taxes include their charitable giving - which might be part of the reason liberals tolerate higher taxes than conservatives. And which probably accounts for the fact that our esteemed vice-president gave less than $4000 to charity, total, over the last ten years. Averaging under 400 bucks a year.

OTOH, those conservatives will probably give it to some silly religious charity that I don't approve of at all (because, say, it promulgates the idiotic idea that you should not know about prophylactics, as you're supposed to "stay clean until marriage". That's money spent on something that actually bothers me. Although G.W. one-upped that by letting the federal govt pay for efforts to spread religious dogmas known to not work.), so why would that impress me? I'd rather they wouldn't have given those charities money. And 1/3 of total donations goes to "religious charities". Sure, not all of them are as radical as these, but I'd prefer it if it went to charities that were a little less partisan.

Originally Posted by Harmon

I have a theory that the people who want a government based health system are really people who trust top down systems over bottom up ones. They believe that they can impose order on the messiness of life, and think that government is the tool that will provide that order.

But my experience tells me that it is always better to have more than one place you can go to get things done. So I'm not all that certain that the US health "system" is necessarily all that bad.

Sorry, but how many of those "top-down" systems have you personally experienced? (I'm not sure that description really captures it the difference in mindset, though; your country is, as I see it, one of the few democratic countries where fear of the government is institutionalized. Did you ever wonder if that doesn't force the individual bureaucrats that make up the government to believe that they should behave like that? It seems rather like a system that perpetuates itself, and I'm not sure what it is you gain.)

Uninteresting sidenote/corrolary: It's not like the states are really what you invest in emotionally either, so why is the federal govt so much scarier?

Sure, Nate might fall through a crack some day. It's called "liberty."

I doubt that "liberty" is synonymous to what we call "bad government policy", so there must be something wrong with this statement.

And we will take care of my brother, one way or another. It's called "family." And I, personally, value both of those things more than I value what government offers,

I see. So you don't think you would be at all resentful if he were to cause you, say, 100k$ in medical debt? You would still call it his "right choice to have made"? Or would you lay into him for forcing you to choose between paying an idiotic sum, or letting him die? And even if you are able to afford that easily, I'm fairly sure most of your country's inhabitants aren't. What are they supposed to do when their brother is in trouble? Let him die 15 years early, saying "he should've known better" or "he took a gamble and he lost"? Because in that case I don't see why the same doesn't also apply to your brother's case.

which is the enemy of liberty and family, and is called "security," but inevitably turns into "tyranny."

Yes, as I mentioned under my first bit: "Govt is scary". Didn't you ever wonder what governments behave like that haven't been raised with 200 years of this silly fear-mongering? It's not as though govt is a separate entity; it's being run by people who have also been raised and indoctrinated with the thought that govt is bad, or alternatively, that govt is much maligned and should be resentful of that. Seems like a neat self-fulfilling prophecy anyway. Anyway, I dare you to name an example, beside (economically downtrodden) Italy and Germany in the 1930s, of a democratic society where this inevitable thing has come to pass.