A friend of a friend who’s a hardcore Obama supporter through thick & thin and also a stay-at-home mom opines, “I like Obamacare because it means I’ll get free vaccines for my son.”
Oh. You wanted a lesson in life? Here goes:
For starters, no it’s not fucking free. You personally might not have to pay for it but that does not make it “free”. Everything has a cost, and the failure to grasp this concept is failure to grasp the fundamental laws of reality.
Now that we’ve gotten today’s lesson in metaphysics out of the way and we can agree that it’s not “free”, you have some explaining to do.
You have to explain why someone else has to pay for the things you want, for instance explain why my wife and I (who both work) should be forced to pay to support your choice to not work? You would never dream of holding me as your slave and forcing me to provide for you, yet the policies you favor, and more specifically the political means by which you seek to effect your desired outcomes, are essentially just that.
And don’t give me any crap about the people who “can’t afford it” because:
- You’re not in that class and it’s an insult to anyone who is if you’re insinuating that, and
- By and large people can or could afford things but they are prevented or otherwise forcibly deprived means of doing so (cf., Scratching by: How Government Creates Poverty as We Know It, On Breaking Your Legs and Giving You Crutches: A Response To A Liberal) and/or
- They just choose not to because they’ve been conned in to believing, just like you, that these things are “free” and that they are entitled to them without providing for them.
Also, you need to explain why this mentality of yours isn’t exactly the same as the “selfishness” you abhor when a libertarian wants to keep the whole of her own earnings in order to provide for her own family, well-being, needs, etc.
But I’m pretty sure what I’m hearing right now is the sound of deaf ears not listening.