@blatham,
blatham wrote:
Quote:georgeob: left wing advocates of extended government management and control of individual affairs
Me: To what, exactly, do you refer? Which individual affairs does someone like me wish to control?
georgeob
Quote:you can start with individual health care choices, parental choices for public education and charter schools, religious freedom, and gun ownership.
I believe you have framed the issues below in accordance with your own point of view, and not mine, which is very different. I am more interested in preserving my individual freedom of choice than I am with government-imposed systems that usually function less well than do those in free markets.
blatham wrote:, - individual health care choices
Here in BC, there is no restriction on which doctor I see. It's personal choice (as anywhere, subject to available doctors in your region who have additional patient capacity). If I'm not happy, I seek and see another.
Individuals earning more than $42,000 per year pay $75 monthly for all services - doctors and any hospital expenses. Medications are extra but are heavily subsidized
Everyone gets covered and treated. Poverty or financial distress become irrelevant.
Our Medicare system permits a choice of doctors (subject to availability) as well. However. in Coastal California, only a minority of medical practitioners participate in the government programs. The rest have opted out, as bureaucratically imposed price limits and productivity standards & protocols have multiplied. Indeed, many don’t participate in or accept managed-care private insurance programs either, and as the micromanagement of third parties rises, more and more doctors opt out. (Poor Bernie Sanders doesn’t yet understand that doctors here are free agents and not yet chattels of a Socialist government.
I wouldn’t buy a government-produced automobile or frequent a government-managed restaurant or club. Why should I then seek or frequent a government- managed health care system designed by politicians and managed by bureaucrats? I prefer a direct relationship with my doctor without an uninvited third party between us; quick access to specialists when needed; and a client-focused, fairly pleasant experience overall. One can get that only in a free market system with unfettered client choice.
blatham wrote:- parental choices for public education and charter schools
The only restrictions here are related to geography with exception of choice options for French immersion or regular English-based schools …..
Some private schools are funded @50% or 35% of local school district rates. These schools must be non-profit operations, employ provincially certified teachers, have curricula consistent with provincial curricula and maintain adequate facilities.
Similar arguments obtain here as well. Our public schools are generally disasters run by misguided and autonomous bureaucracies (and a corrupt Teachers union). A few, mostly in wealthy and Liberal monocultural neighborhoods are tolerable. They have long been operated in accordance with once fashionable Humanist doctrines (John Dewey, Carl Rogers, et.al.) with which I do not agree.
All four of our children were educated in Catholic Elementary and High schools, with fairly rigorous academic standards, and in accord with a moral philosophy with which I agree. All welcomed a high degree of parental involvement and oversight- unlike our Public Schools.
Our five grandchildren have followed the same pattern as well – except one, the child of my oldest daughter – a very strong-willed ball buster whom we affectionately know as “Spider Woman” due to her overbearing ways. Daughter Elsa is cut from the same cloth and attends a private secular high school here in the Bay area, that interestingly has a curriculum much like the one I experienced long ago at Gonzaga HS (she’s even reading Virgil and Horace …. in Latin!) . She is one of but a few conservative-minded students in the school, but, like her mother, she doesn't feel outnumbered.
blatham wrote:- religious freedom
Here, you are speaking in the context of US culture and law. But I see the common claim there that religion is being throttled or freedoms curtailed to be deeply deceitful or misplaced at best. Churches aren't being closed down. …..
blatham wrote:I suspect you wish to claim that religious groups ought to have the freedom to behave towards others as their ideology directs. But of course, that liberty is itself constrained in that it cannot imperil or constrain the liberty of others. I make no demand that women get abortions. I accept no constraint on women's right to make that choice, as an obvious example.
No big argument there. However, the fast-increasing intrusion of government, law and bureaucratic regulation into many new areas of our lives is indeed beginning to constrain our Constitutional liberties in this area. The absence of a preference for religion in government is no excuse for constraining it generally. With respect to abortion the, as yet , untested issue of the human life in a mother’s womb has been too long carefully evaded.
blatham wrote:- gun ownership ----- No big argument here, except that contemporary Progressive social engineers appear to have their heads up their asses when it comes to determining who will be most and least affected by laws limiting access to guns and who is doing all the killing out there. In general, I strongly prefer the preservation of our liberties, even in the face of idiots who presume to alone know what is good for everyone else and who wish to codify their prejudgments into law.
[quote="blatham" So, no, I'm not compelled by your suggestion that any of these four example constitute unacceptable curtailment of citizens' rights.
Unacceptable to whom?? You or me??
