Ted Nugent: Independence is a beautiful thing; dependency isn't

Ted Nugent: Independence is a beautiful thing; dependency isn't

Last year, I posted (on an alternate blog) an article by Ted Nugent. The concept was that "Universal Health Care" was a Socialist invention which was doomed to failure (because it required that productive members of society would be required to support non-productive members, with the predictable result that the well would run dry.)

Today I received a comment by a person who not only is unable to definitively identify himself, but expressed only contempt for the concept:

"Malicious Matt":
From: Malicious Matt
Malicious Matt has left a new comment on your post "Ted Nugent: Nothing is free":

Right on! Compassion and decency is for liberal sissies! The world needs bigger, greedier corporations, more right-wing gun toting morons screaming "freedom" while boycotting records by artists who openly criticize Bush, less black people, and more wars to fuel the military industrial complex! HAHA!!

Oh, and by the way, the American healthcare system is NOT envied around the world. I know, because I've been there, and the majority are afraid the same will happen in their countries. So somebody's been fuckin lying to ya on that point, m'kay? Great.

I realize that the email address is not workable, but I replied to it anyway. (And I'll soon post the reply to the the original article.)

But because it is a slow blogging day, and because the comment demonstrates a lamentable (if pathetic) all-too-common attitude, I include both the original response and my reply here.

(Note that my reply is, predictably, "Geek-Length".)

Jerry the Geek:
Hi Matt;
I'm the guy who blogged (last year!) the Ted Nugent article about "Nothing Is Free". You raised some interesting .. if self-serving ... comments.

Let's look at them, shall we?

"Compassion and decency is for liberal sissies!"

I'm just guessing here, but apparently you think that a National Health Care Law (such as exists in England and Canada) is A Good Idea.

You do realize, don't you, that this is rampant socialism?

You do realize that a National Health Care Law, as envisioned by both Obama and Clinton, includes garnisheeing your wages if you do not sign up for a (mandatory) weekly donation to a National Health Plan?

Did you realize that English and Canadian citizens often find themselves at the end of a long, long line of prior applicants for such immediately necessary procedures as MRI or CAT-SCAN?

Let's say that your physician (if you can get an appointment) diagnoses you as having Cancer, and prescribes both of these procedures to determine whether and what treatment would be most likely to arrest the progression of your disease. Did ou know that you will be scheduled after all the soccer injuries have been processed ... because they put their names in earlier than you? Did you know that Cancer can be arrested with early treatment, but is less likely to be survivable if diagnostic procedures are not made available in a timely fashion?

Let us further suppose that (unlikely as it seems today), you are gainfully employed and can afford to spend, say, $1,000 out-of-pocket to confirm the diagnosis.

Did you know that you are not legally permitted, under the National Health Care Law, to seek technical diagnostic help because you need it immediately to save your life, and you can afford it? But you can't get it?

That's why Canadians are commonly driving from, say, Ontario to Milwaukee to get an MRI. America has the resources, and will prioritize your access because if you don't get it quickly, you will die.

On the other hand, let's say that you are an American citizen and receive the same tentative diagnosis. Did you know that you will be placed at the head of the line for necessary emergency medical care, based only on the immediacy of your need even though you can't personally afford it?

That's right, the American system of medicine places need above resources ... and in fact, that is true even if you are not a citizen and are, in fact, in America illegally.

And that, incidentally, is why hospitals in border states such as Arizona and Texas are closing; foreign nationals may have illegally crossed the border to avail themselves of emergency medical treatment, even though they may not have contributed to the general fund by virtue of having performed useful labor and contributed to the tax base.

You say:
"Oh, and by the way, the American healthcare system is NOT envied around the world"; but 900,000 Mexicans a year are risking arrest and deportation ... and death by dehydration in the Arizona deserts ...every year, in part because they can access (at little or no cost to them) medical services which are not available in their home country.

This sounds not only envious, but downright avaricious.

Let's look at who does NOT envy the American health-care system.

How about the French?

Matt, do you work for a living? Do you pay your own way, or do you sit back and let someone else pay your bills?

In France, recently, students (and I am only assuming that you are a student, correct me if I'm wrong) rioted because the French socialist government attempted to pass a law stating that people who were hired into a job could be fired in the first year of employment if the employee proved to be incompetent.

Think of that. What a concept. You are hired to do a job, but you can't do it; so your employer discharges you to find employment for which you are qualified. Current French law does not permit that, and students (who are unemployed, because no employer is willing to accept the risk of hiring someone who thinks they are ENTITLED to a job even if they can't/won't do it) are literally up in arms. They can't get a job, but they are outraged by the threat that if they DO get a job, they may be fired because they can't do it.

That's the face of Socialism, Matt. That' s the system you are defending.

Let's scroll back and look at a word slyly embedded two paragraphs back:


ENTITLED

What does that mean?

It means that people who are ENTITLED to something don't have to earn it; they don't have to prove that they freely enter into a quid-pro-quo relationship with their employer (or their government). It is, if you will, a God-Given right.

Got to the Constitution of the United States and look at the Bill of Rights. These are "entitlements", because 226 years ago (give or take, given the lengthy process of agreeing the rights are truly God-given) our Founding Fathers determined that citizens are definitively ENTITLED to some freedoms and/or rights.

Note that the constitution doesn't guarantee that, for example, you are ENTITLED to happiness. It only suggests that all men are (entitled) to the pursuit of happiness. That is, the Government (big-G) won't guarantee happiness; but the government (little-g) won't stand in your way if you have the initiative and the determination to actively pursue it yourself.

You don't seem to have a lot of faith in America, Matt. It may be because you have always been given everything you needed (even though your parents spoiled you rotten in the process). It may be because you are, at heart, a slacker who has no intention of earning your own way in life. It may even be because you have been seduced by a hopeful philosophy such as communism ("from each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs") which seemed to have promised you "something for nothing".

Communism isn't like that. Instead, as the Russian people learned over 74 years of painful experience, that communism and its handmaiden Socialism is more likely to guarantee you nothing in return for contributing everything you have or can produce.

Because you offer only cat-calls and slogans, Matt, it's difficult for me to understand your resistance to the concept that "you get what you earn", so some of my assumptions may seem far from applicable. Well, your cognitive processes don't demonstrate an intellectual response to the proposition inherent in the article, so perhaps you may forgive me if I don't seem to respond positively; after all, your comments do seem more nihilistic than constructive criticism, so how seriously can we take your disjointed rambling?

Let me put this in the most simplistic terms (which are all you seem to be able to grasp), and in the kindest, most gentle manner possible:

You don't think about life. You have no philosophy. You are nothing more than a spoiler, willing to criticize the expressions of people with more experience and more hard-learned lessons .. only because you can. Everything you write is less significant than graffiti on the wall of a tavern mens-room, and as likely to be taken seriously. If you ever had an original thought, it would be
original only in your own mind, and only because you are too drunk with cheap beer to realize that you are parroting the words of the last person who spoke to you.

Matt, that last person regrets having spoke to you because you make their words look bad. You embarrass them.

If you were sufficiently thoughtful to think for yourself, you would not have
written those disjointed drivel.

Oh, as as for your claim to "... know, because I've been there"? I doubt it. I strongly suspect you have been no further from the place where you were whelped than the nearest tavern; your words are not as cosmopolitan as the illiterate scratchings in your middle-school English Composition essays ... you know, those penciled scrawls with the big red "F" on them.

Which may be why ("So somebody's been fuckin lying to ya on that point, m'kay?")...strongly suggests you don't know how to spell "Fucking", "You", or "Okay".

Go get a job, or get an education.

Respectfully submitted,
Jerry the Geek