The Invisible Counterpoint

New Jerusalem If it's going to help people, they should fight like hell to get as much as they can, but also to pass it. I say this not because I don't believe more substantial reforms couldn't be initiated later, but because I believe this is the one and only year Obama is going to seem the least bit liberal. It will be liberals who will come to fret the government, if government -- even its social services -- comes to seem more muscle than nurture. Making a nation fit for war is not something we liberals have in mind, but it is something ill-liberals could come to see some sense in. Liberals probably would be wise to at least begin talking succession. New style -- with finesse, with the least amount of antagonism, of course. There are just so many people in the US who want public healthcare -- a good society; more than enough, that is, to populate a country. When you come to realize that your dreams can no longer be realized, and that you are at risk, you owe to you...

Lloyd DeMause argues that the reason we don't have universal healthcare is because America is the nation which mostly enthusiastically "argues" that life can be all about being happy, living your dreams, while all those with univeral healthcare advocate some kind of modest, humble, "just make sure you don't stand too far apart from the crowd," approach to life. Subjugate yourself, and collectively you come to believe you now deserve to have such "parental" provisions such as universal healthcare. It's all messed up -- but it's what happens when you grow up in sin-cultures, where being happy is too readily associated with selfishness, where somebody has to be punished for all the fun. If with Obama America changes how it imagines itself, where individual happiness becomes seen increasingly as indulgent, as in the path of public renewal, and it becomes all about doing your part for the nation, I wouldn't be surprised if America gets u...