On belief.

Clinton "takes her inspiration from European democracies. and "fundamentally does not believe in markets and in the states"

Mitt Romney, regarding Hillary Clinton's Health Care plan.


Well,good. The free market is a human system, operated by human beings, and is it not heretical to just about every religion to believe that a mortal system will provide the greater number of material goods to those who deserve it most? Here we see the dark side of the American dream in a nutshell; or rather, not dark side, because it is not malevolent,but more accurately the negative side, based on the childish desire to believe that the way things are is the way they are meant to be, that there is a friendly little grandad somewhere back there making sure that bad things happen only to bad people.

Personally, I think that capitalism is the generally the lesser of all evils. I make no apologies for not manfully believing in it. Many conservatives are of the mind that the basis of freedom is the ability to acquire and defend property. this is nonsense. There is no moral or symbollic connection between the work we do and the money we are paid for it. We do not "earn" money through our work, we are merely paid for our work. The things we choose to buy with this money do not represent our work ethic, do not represent our willingness to contribute to society, and do not represent our willingness to provide for our families. We are nothing but our individual brains, and we cannot possibly assert our beings materially. One cannot possibly declare the importance of one's existance materially, cannot possibly defy mortality through any tangible thing.

No, the basis of freedom is freedom from belief. Virtually any belief that seems decent and moral on its surface requires subsidiary beliefs that are ruthless, nihilistic, and nonsensical. I can not think of a single belief that does not require stretching conformation bias to its limit. For every vagrant begging you for enough change for a steel reserve there is a scotch-addled executive who has handlers to keep his habit quiet. for every young welfare mother there is an upper-middle class party girl tearing through the local frathouse bedrooms with impunity thanks to her access to condoms, the pill, and the clinic.

Adherence to tradition is submission to mortality and nothingness. Optimism is a sort of fascism.

As for health care, how long shall we wait before our Godly belief in the free market pays off? Can we expect children to stop dying of toothaches before or after our self-inbred messiah comes down from the clouds?