A Philosophical Difference?

Sometimes you disappoint me Beagles, I am all set to have at you as a typical right wing nut, but then you turn out to be not the stereotypical foe I expect, and I have to blunt my charge. While I differ from the standard left wing thing a bit, I believe that I am more partisan than you, probably because I am more interested in the politics and you are more interested in the ideas.

I don’t remember all the details of the fight for Obamacare, but single payer was what all we liberals wanted, and I believe it was diluted at some point to where the government would be a choice among private insurers, the idea being I think that the government, with all its resources, would soon out compete the insurers, except for maybe folks who wanted a little extra care as you’ve described the Canadians have, but even that lost out.

In the end I think Obama had to lean on the insurance companies to get this through, and that led to the kind of messed up system it is now. I’m not up on all the details and I think there will be changes along the way, but I think it will be better than what we have now, and I think in my secret liberal heart that just by tinkering with health care we are moving closer to that socialized medicine, though I have no concrete proof of anything like that.

See, but you, the idealist, would have put it up for a vote, even if you were pretty sure it was going to lose, because this is the system you want, like you want to vote for the candidate you like even if he has no chance of winning, whereas I would go with the lesser plan because it is better than nothing.

I’m not sure if what I said is exactly right, but I think it is another difference in our outlooks besides the left/right thing. I’d like to go on with this more because it gets us into that field I love to hate, but really love to hate, philosophy.

As far as Syria, I think it’s great that we are not involved in it, and not even thinking of getting involved in it, except for nutty John McCain, who has even quieted down some. Of course we don’t know exactly what is going on there, except what people we don’t entirely trust tell us, but the basic fact is that they haven’t gassed anybody lately, which is the really important thing.

You would think Obama would try to get a little credit for this, but I think he doesn’t want to touch it because you never know which way it is going to go.