4.24.2014

So, I saw a post on Facebook the other day and it was a link that said “These are easily the top ten questions to ask a liberal…” So, I decided that I would write a response to this link, just to prove that someone with a modicum of common sense, rationale, empathy, and morality could easily answer these questions, and with a much better answer than the marginally literate original author could construct.  Without any more delay, here are the Neocon questions followed up with my responses.

Q. How many people should we let into this country?

A. As many as want to immigrate here.  The problem has become that wealthy white males have taken to being incredibly possessive of what isn’t theirs to become possessive over.  This nation was founded on immigration, and it was founded on an open arm policy to others searching for a better opportunity in life.  You aren’t entitled to a better life than others because a random number generator placed your birth in the USA, but billions of others didn’t have that random beneficial chance.  You didn’t earn living in America.  You didn’t fight and struggle to live in America.  Living here is a chance at something better, and you don’t have any right to restrict that from anyone else.  What liberals WANT is immigration reform: a fast path to citizenship, protections for children and minors, healthcare for everyone that comes into this nation, and open borders.  Stop making the argument about takers and moochers, because undocumented immigration actually provides a net gain to our economy of approximately 1-2%.  There is just no reason whatsoever that non-citizens should be prevented from coming into America easily and quickly.

Q. How are rules that apply equally to everyone discriminatory and racist?

A.  They aren’t.  The system is.  Education has a white bias.  I’m a white straight male, and I can’t even begin to explain how overtly racist our education system is.  Racial minorities are more likely than white students to be suspended from school, to have less access to rigorous math and science classes, and to be taught by lower-paid teachers with less experience.   Even as early as preschool, black students face harsher discipline than other students.  In high school, the study found that while more than 70 percent of white students attend schools that offer a full range of math and science courses — including algebra, biology, calculus, chemistry, geometry and physics — just over half of all black students have access to those courses. Just over two-thirds of Latinos attend schools with the full range of math and science courses, and less than half of American Indian and Native Alaskan students are able to enroll in as many high-level math and science courses as their white peers.  The information is merely a Google search and a discerning ability to determine credible studies away.

We have less crime, but more prisoners than ever, most of whom are non-white, a little over 60% of the prison population.  To get deeper into the numbers, about 5% of the entire black male population is in prison or jail.  About 2% of the entire Hispanic male population is in prison or jail.  Less than 1% of the white male population is in prison or jail.  Those numbers might not seem that odd, except that African Americans only make up about 14% of the entire US population, and Hispanics only 16%.  That leaves about 70% of the population as white.  The numbers are severely skewed against non-whites.  Even further, a black male is 28% likely to go to jail or prison in their lifetime.  A while male is 4% likely.

The War on Drugs is just another attempt to prevent non-whites from being able to vote, hold jobs, or move up in socio-economic status.  What better way to prevent a group of people that are hated than to create a new sub-class of the minority group and remove all of their civil liberties, and blame them for it.  We are now doing what should have been done a long time ago, and legalizing marijuana.  Around 750,000 people or more are arrested every year for marijuana charges.   Finally, we can stop harassing people for non-violent crimes like marijuana possession.

So the question is not, “How are rules that apply equally to everyone discriminatory and racist?” as stated but is actually, “How does privilege factor into rules that are supposed to apply equally to everyone?”

Q. How are rules that only apply to one group of people not discriminatory and racist?

A. To understand the answer to this, you would have to understand the concept of privilege.  The existence of the system denotes discrimination against minority groups based solely on the reality that the majority group has the privilege.  In this case, we’re talking about Affirmative Action specifically.  The reason that Affirmative Action exists is because many people that sit upon the throne of privilege absolutely refuse to allow anyone else to have a chance at that throne as well.  Without laws to protect these minority groups, then there would be continued attempts maintaining privilege at the expense of the other groups. 

It’s understandable, because many white people do not “feel” their access to power or their privilege.  As Francis Kendall says in Understanding White Privilege, 2002, “White privilege is an institutional set of benefits granted to those of us who, by race, resemble the people who dominate the powerful position in our institutions.”  This is what it means to be white, that people of our race dominate the institutional world that we live in.  We have more access to the power.  Again from Kendall’s article, “The statistics from the 1995 Glass Ceiling Commission show that, while white men constitute about 43% of the work force, they hold 95% of senior management positions in American industry. Looking purely at white privilege, white women hold about 40% of the middle management positions, while Black women hold 5% and Black men hold 4%. Unless we believe that white women or African American men and women are inherently less capable, we have to acknowledge that our systems are treating us unequally.”

This is why Affirmative Action is so important.  The purpose is actually about lessening PRIVILEGE and is in no way discriminatory.  A lessening of privilege cannot by definition be discrimination.  An equalizing of opportunity between the power group and minorities cannot be perceived as a slight against the majority power.

Then again, you would have to actually accept that privilege exists, and that minority groups do not start on even ground with the majority group, and therefore, with all rules being equal, cannot possibly ever achieve the same as the majority group.

Q. Do you know what a pyramid scheme is?

Here’s a better question: Do YOU know what a pyramid scheme is?  Or, even better than that: Do you know what The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act really is?  In a nutshell, it is a requirement for all adults in the United States to have purchased private health care, either on their own, or through a special marketplace.  It prevents insurance companies from offering terrible and dangerous plans, it prevents them from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions, and it ensures that everyone has access to basic care.  It is not a “buy in” program.  It does not force you to invest in a pyramid scheme.  It is a basic level of federal government obligatory coverage under the statement of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

However, for fun, let’s begin to go through a few Conservative talking points on healthcare in the last few decades:

Talking point #1: Allow insurance to be sold across state lines and remove restrictions.  The PPaACA does this.

Talking point #2: Remove restrictions on preexisting conditions.  The PPaACA does this.

Talking point #3: Eliminate massively costly to everyone else catastrophic plans.  The PPaACA does this.

In addition to this, Mitt Romney signed a nearly similar act into law as Massachusetts governor in 2008.  It’s a wildly popular idea in Conservative thought BEFORE 2008, and only after the Socialist Kenyan Muslim black guy became the President of the United States.

No matter how you look at it, there’s nothing “pyramid scheme” about the PPaACA.  It places a mandate on purchasing a legal and valid insurance plan, but that insurance you were already getting if you could afford it.  Most people are actually lying about negative consequences of the PPaACA or they are merely getting their privilege equaled out.  Either way, this is a step in the right direction, which is Universal Single Payer Healthcare.

Q. Why is it okay to kill unborn children but wrong to kill convicted murderers?

A. This is a sensitive subject, and there is a massive spectrum of beliefs on it, so I will attempt to be much more cognizant of that fact than the author of the original question is.  That being said, this question is complete bullshit, and places some sort of relevance between abortion and the death penalty, as though they are similar in any possible way.

The first issue is that this is a false dichotomy.  This is not an either or scenario, and in each situation the conditions are different.  In one, a person, generally a woman has to make an individual decision regarding her pregnancy.  In another, the government is actively engaging in murdering its citizens.

Let’s start with the abortion issue, which is terribly annoying to discuss at all, anyway.  In order for a woman to have an abortion in the USA the fetus must not be able to viably live outside of the womb.  It’s that simple, it just isn’t alive until it can viably live outside of the womb.  It is not a person until then, and it is a piece of the woman’s own body until it can be its own entity.  But beyond this, it is an individual decision, and therefore, whether legal or not, has zero bearing on the other issue in this question.

Regarding the death penalty, the argument against it is two-fold.  Firstly, the cost of the death penalty is approximately $90,000 per year per inmate on death row MORE expensive than the cost of a life without parole inmate in California specifically.  It’s said that California spends $184 million more per year because of the death penalty over life imprisonment without parole.  I realize that this is difficult, but if a Conservative wants to debate how to cut costs, this is a specific example of how to do it.

The second piece of the argument is moral.  At no point should a government be allowed to commit legal murder against its citizens, regardless of reasoning.  Murder of a viably alive person should always be illegal, regardless of who is committing the murder.

These are the responses to the terribly constructed illogical question of why it is ok to kill unborn children [sic] but wrong to kill convicted murderers?

Q. How does stagnating growth stimulate the economy?

A. It doesn’t.  This answer is why we currently have the most stagnant economy ever right now with record low tax rates and with record high corporate profits and executive salaries and bonuses.  However, the author once again just makes up a false argument to further an incoherent thought.

Right now, in the United States, we have the highest gap of wealth since the Great Depression.  Giving tax breaks to the wealthy only does not induce spending, and in fact, as it has been proven over and over again, when a smaller percentage of hyper wealthy get more money, that money gets hidden in banks, tax havens, and persona investments for dividends, and gets fully removed from the economy.

By allowing for tax rates to normalize, deflating the interest rates, raising the minimum wage and encouraging job growth with inceptives and mandates, more people get to work and more people have money to spend.

And enough with this lie about job creators.  Right now, corporate profits have never been higher.  Corporate tax rates have never been lower.  And yet, employment is stagnant.  That’s because pushing Austrian economic theory above everything else has morally bankrupted this nation.  We now believe any unemployed to be welfare queens.  Over half of minimum wage workers are over 25 years old.  We allow the hyper wealthy to dictate our policy, and that policy literally only benefits them.

Stagnating growth is done by giving tax breaks to the top bracket.  It is done by allowing wage stagnation when the economy and GDP grow regularly.  It is done by allowing the hyper wealthy to dictate our policies.

Q. Does it make sense to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result?

A. I see that this is an attempt to be snarky about welfare.  The inability to comprehend the morality of social safety nets is the true insanity of this question.  Whether we like it or not, the social safety net is necessary as conscious humans in the species.  We have an obligation in social contract to take care of each other under all circumstances, even when we might have a difference of opinion.

That being said, the money that is lost to the social safety net is less than an inflated DoD budget.  So, unless you’re willing to hack and slash into a piece of budget that costs the American taxpayers more than the welfare piece of the budget, then your argument is merely an argument against poor people, and is disgusting. 

People deserve a chance in this country, and until we destroy racism, until we figure out a way to equalize and normalize privilege, then the social safety net is crucial.

Q. How will punishing law-abiding people stop criminals from breaking the law?

A. No one is punishing law-abiding citizens, and to add some restrictions to current gun laws is not a punishment.  That’s the issue with this discussion; it is a logical fallacy to even intimate that added restrictions to gun laws are a punishment.  I’ll address actual “right to bear arms” next.  However making two of these questions about gun rights means that you couldn’t even think of 10 questions.

Q. How can you count to ten if you skip the number two?

A. This one bugs me only because in order to answer the question, I have to wade through the swamp that is the argument regarding individual rights and government rights.

The Bill of Rights lays out ten specific things that the government cannot force or restrict in regards to individuals.  Going through them, very quickly:

1. The government cannot prevent or restrict the practice of any religion, press, assembly, or speech.  This includes forcing a specific religion on someone, such as creating a Christian state, or claiming that we are a Christian nation, any published or written works, and legal organized groups, or any statements.  Most people are in agreement with all but the Christian part, but I won’t get into that, since it wasn’t mentioned.

2. The government cannot prevent any legally aged adult male from entering into the state regulated militia and thereby following the rules of the regulated militia requiring that all members arm themselves.  (I’m not certain how anyone could think this is a government right vs. individual right, it’s clearly spelled out as an individual right).  This was the accepted translation of this amendment until 2008, when an activist SCOTUS overturned the several century interpretation in Heller, 2008.

3. The government cannot force an individual to quarter soldiers.  Pretty simple.  I’m not sure how this one is easily interpreted, but the previous one is so often.  Oh, that’s right; no one is lobbying with billions of dollars to quarter soldiers.

4. The government cannot search or seize the property of individuals without probable cause.  Again, very simple.

5. The government cannot cause a person to incriminate themselves nor can the government induce double jeopardy on an individual.  The government cannot cause an individual to forego due process of law, or take private property without compensation.

6. The government cannot delay or draw out a trial against an individual, the right to an impartial jury, informed knowledge of charges being brought against an individual, the right to confront witnesses, the right to compel witnesses to come forward, and the right to an attorney of law.

7. The government cannot prevent a jury trial in civil cases, and a judge cannot overrule a finding of fact by a jury in civil cases.

8. The government cannot set excessive bail against an individual, nor can it levy cruel or unusual punishments.

9. The government cannot deny or disparage other rights retained by individuals.

10. The only one of the Bills of Rights to specify that the States are also responsible for anything not covered by the Constitution.

Now, in these Amendments, I cannot for the life of me see where regular citizens are afforded the right to own murder weapons with unlimited access and no restrictions at all.  We understand that each of these amendments have common sense restrictions to them.  In the First, we understand that we cannot yell “Fire!” in a crowded arena.  We cannot write libelous things, nor state slanderous.  We cannot have a state religion, regardless of how crazy the Christian Right Wing gets in America.  There is a common sense approach to gun laws, and unrestricted is the dumbest idea of them all.

Q. Why was George W. Bush a bad President but Barack Obama is a good one?

A. Again, I don’t know who is making this argument, but it just isn’t a real argument.  President Bush, Jr. had a bad presidency because he willingly allowed himself to be led by an axil of evil, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, primarily.  But the Bush presidency was fraught with ineptitude, poor decisions, poor management, mistakes, foibles, and errors.  Bush Jr., however, did several things correctly.  He was a slightly below average president, as far as historical record will show.

President Obama’s presidency, on the other hand, is a disappointment because of how Republican his policies are.  Tax breaks, corporate bailouts, drone attacks, NSA spying, Gitmo still being opened, etc. are all great reasons as to why the Obama presidency will be viewed by history as being possibly approximately average.  However, the one thing that he has done on a large scale correctly is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  Based on that fact, he will probably be viewed as a slightly above average president in the historical record.