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ythn

Here's a series of questions for any liberal:

1. Should abortion be free and accessible to all women (personal responsibility be darned)?

2. Should rehab be free and accessible to everyone (personal responsibility be darned)?

3. Should healthcare be free and accessible to everyone (personal responsibility be darned)?

4. Should financial assistance be free and accessible to the poor (personal responsibility be darned)?

The part in parenthesis is implied, but every liberal I've spoken with answers yes to all 4. Doesn't matter if you are a smoking, obese, promiscuous gambler by choice, by golly you should be entitled to free healthcare, rehab, abortion services and welfare.

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So by your definition, a non-liberal would answer:

1. No, you can't have an abortion for any reason (rape, abuse, etc.). OR do you mean you can have one, as long as you can afford it.

2. You can't have rehab for any reason it's your fault for doing something dumb. OR is it that you can go to rehab only if you can afford it.

3. You can't have healthcare for any reason. OR is it that you can have healthcare if you can afford it. OR is it only free if you aren't overweight, sit too much, stand too much, floss twice daily and only ever eat fruits and veggies.

4. Financial assistance should only be accessible to the rich. Or is it meant to be accessible to the poor, but they must pay for it?

Certainly, most people, even gasp liberals, tend to ride some middle ground.

> So by your definition, a non-liberal would answer:

1. Abortion is only acceptable in the cases of rape and the mother's life being in danger. Abortion as post-pregnancy contraceptive is totally unacceptable. The correct course is to mandate adoption (in the case the mother doesn't want it) instead, expand adoption opportunity and lower adoption barrier to entry.

2. Patients going through rehab should not simply receive it for free. They should have to "give back" by helping the next generation of addicts via volunteer work.

3. Healthcare should be subsidized more for those who strive to live healthy lives. The people that eat right, exercise, etc, should have higher priority at the doctor and more healthcare-related benefits than people who are overweight, non-exercising, drug-abusing, etc.

4. Financial assistance should not be unconditional. It should be accessible only after the the applicant has gone through financial counselling and taken steps to become more responsible over their finances, learned to budget and eliminate waste from their expenses.

That is how to keep people accountable for their actions while also providing a way out.

I feel like I'm being trolled, but the answer is yes, yes, yes, and yes, because I, a progressive, don't give a shit what people do with their lives.

I, a progressive, value personal freedom and want society to support that.

What choices people make with their one shot on earth is up to them. If a handful make choices I don't agree with, I don't give a shit--they're still people are as deserving of the social safety net as anyone.

And that's what it comes down to. I don't care if people make choices I don't agree with. It's their choice, their body, their whatever. Society should work for them as much as it does me, or it's a shitty society.

> What choices people make with their one shot on earth is up to them.

Yet you also want me to subsidize the fixing of any consequences related to poor choices, no? In other words "Do whatever the heck you want. If you do something incredibly stupid, everyone will help you recover whether they want to or not."

> It's their choice, their body, their whatever.

But it's my tax money that will bail them out of the hole they get themselves in. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The liberal mindset does not reward personal responsibly - it punishes it. The responsible people have to foot the bill of the irresponsible.

Yep, exactly so.

I exactly want your tax dollars to subsidize behaviors you don't approve of. (Not relevant, but mine sure do, in the form of subsidies, funding the military, paying for the militarization of police, etc.) I want all of us to pay into a social safety net that doesn't discriminate.

I have absolutely zero sympathy to this repeated use of this phrase you love, "personal responsibility." Society is all about shared responsibility, and you'd do well to learn that.

> The part in parenthesis is implied

This assertion nullifies your point. The part in parenthesis is obviously in no way implied, and is just hyperbolic rhetoric in an attempt to create a strawman. If you're interested in reasonable debate, I would suggest refraining from such tactics.

Words like "unconditional", "universal", "everyone", "all", etc. absolutely imply that personal responsibility is not a factor.

Give me an example of a liberal stance of one of the above issues that factors in personal responsibility. Hint: none of them do because universal healthcare* (*except for obese people and drug abusers and other people that didn't take care of their bodies) would be very unpopular. Ditto for all other services/stances.

I'd say that the presence of those words implies a practical desire to avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater in the name of an absurd moralistic bogeyman invented by the sort of right-wing goblins who e.g. work to defund Planned Parenthood with one hand while pushing moronic abstinence-only sex "education" with the other.

It still amazes me how politicians who practically wear their absurd hypocrisies on their sleeves can manipulate entire population segments with this sort of puerile garbage.

> Words like "unconditional", "universal", "everyone", "all", etc. absolutely imply that personal responsibility is not a factor.

If you think so, I think you're somewhat missing the point. Or arguing against one that isn't there.

To take your assertion to its logical end:

- system provides "universal" healthcare

- the above system therefore excuses personal responsibility for... healthcare access existing? I'm not really sure where this leads?

What you seem to be assuming is that an "irresponsible" actor impinges on service provision by virtue of their irresponsibility. Believe it or not, this is not an assumption rooted in reality. If it were, the US per capita healthcare budget would be much lower than that of France.

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