| As I've said before, what's been obvious from the debate over health care is that Democrats are committed to building community while Republicans just want to be left alone.
Consider the different ways the two parties approach the concept of social "insurance." Whether it's sold as protection against threats to your car, home, life or health the underlying premise of insurance is always the same: by coming together to spread risk across the entire community we are able to collectively provide for ourselves in ways that very few of us could do on our own.
Yet, as Jonathan Chait argues in the New Republic today, the modern Republican Party rejects the core principle of insurance and with it any sense of national community.
Evidence for this, says Chait, lies in the fact that the alternative plans Republicans have offered for cutting the cost of health care would reduce premiums by bringing more younger and healthier people into the insurance pool, but at the cost of driving older and sicker people out by raising their premiums.
The reason Republicans don't think twice about throwing mama from the train, says Chait, is that "the modern Republican domestic agenda is, above all, an attack on redistribution, a crusade to free society's winners from shouldering the burdens of its losers."
Chait illustrates the divide between Republicans and Democrats by pointing to an exchange between liberal Senator Tom Harkin and former Bush health care speechwriter Jeff Anderson. When Harkin attacked Republican policies for allowing "segregation in America on the basis of your health," he was mocked by Anderson, who shot back: "Having people pay their own way is apparently an injustice akin to segregating them by race or creed."
"Pay their own way" is a perfect metaphor for the Republican Party's idea of community, says Chait, an ugly place where the law of the jungle holds sway, survival of the fittest prevails and the very idea of insurance is attacked as a corrupting force that undermines "personal responsibility."
Conservatism is supposed to be about conserving those values and practices which promote peaceful, harmonious and stable communities. Instead, much of what currently passes for conservatism seems dedicated to their dissolution, as community ties are weakened, the softer virtues like empathy and compassion which act as a society's connective tissue are dislocated, and any sense of common destiny is carpet-bombed out of existence by FOX, by Rush and by harpies like Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter who tell their audiences that it's not only okay to hate -- it's righteous!
And today, health care reform is a perfect proxy for the radically different ways Republicans and Democrats look at the idea of community. Here's hoping that in the days and weeks to come these contrasting worldviews get at least as much attention as does the debate over pre-existing conditions and Senate reconciliation. |
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