politics views that you hold?

Reminds me of a time a couple of years ago when everyone was discussing ObamaCare. I was in an elevator talking to a friend and telling him that I though ObamaCare would be a disaster because we cannot afford it.

Some complete stranger in the elevator suddenly starts berating me about my politics and being really quite aggressive about it.

That wasn't you was it?

You market trolls love to wax poetic about personal responsibility, but the real consequence of the policies you support result in the 1% being free of any responsibility at all for their actions. The 1% win regardless of whether they screw up or not. Meanwhile, everybody else pays the consequences of their screwups, they pay the consequences even if something happens to them that's no fault of their own, and they pay the consequences of the screwups of the 1% too. It's worse than the law of the jungle. In the jungle, it's every animal for itself. But what even the strongest and most vicious animal can't do, is pass on their power to their offspring, and when they cease to be able to defend being at the top of the heap on their own merits, they're subject to the same forces as everyone else. In the human jungle that the libertarians are trying hard to create, the strongest and most vicious animals not only get to bully everyone else, but they get to pass on that ability to their parasitic offspring, and they're protected by a network of laws and cops and miltaries that protect their privilege to do things they could never do just on their own.

The libertarians say they want less government, but that's a total lie. They want government to stay out of the business of protecting the weak from the strong. But they want a strong and powerful government to viciusly and brutally protect the power of the rich and the strong, against the interests of everyone else.

What progressives want is civilization. Progressives want government to stay out of people's business in their personal lives. (And incidentally, I never once advocated denying parents and young people the right to join JROTC; if you want to go to cannon fodder propaganda camp, go for it. Just do it on your own time and don't ask the schools to pay for it. The schools are in the business of educating kids and nurturing their growth, not aiding the already substantial military propaganda machine).

However, progressives recognize that everybody makes bad choices from time to time. And sometimes -often, actually -shit happens that isn't the result of bad choices at all, but of lousy luck. And even more often, the shit that happens isn't the result of personal bad choices, or even bad luck, but systemic problems that disadvantage some and give others an unfair advantage. It is these things that society can and should mitigate. And you don't even have to come out of some great sense of justice; just as a practical matter, we all (or at least 99% of us) do better when society mitigates these things rather than exacerbates them. The research is clear that on a whole variety of seemingly unrelated social ills, we do better with progressive policies.

If people did better on indicators of health and wellbeing from libertarian policies, then I'd still be a libertarian. It's a tempting philosophy. But they don't . Once I grew up, I realized that organizing society around that philosophy only leads to misery. So that's where I'm coming from.

Anyway, I'm sure the trolls will all pounce now. Go at it, trolls. Have the last word, because you need to have the last word. Me, I'm done. It's a beautiful day and I'm going hiking.