A friend just forwarded an email to me that her father had sent her - partly to vent, and partly to ask for ammunition to use in responding. The email is your basic conservative sermonette (why do these people always sound like they're in a pulpit?) about the perils of expecting a "free lunch" from government, using wild pigs as an analogy.
You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and
putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come
everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every
day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used
to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn
again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to
that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four
sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs that are
used to the free corn start to come through the gate to eat, and then
you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.
Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and
around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to
eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten
how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their
captivity.
The email isn't worth quoting in its entirety, but a couple of paragraphs jumped out at me:
The government keeps pushing us toward
socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of
programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income,
tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP),
welfare, medicine, drugs, etc, etc, etc. While we continue to lose
our freedoms - just a little at a time.
One should always remember: There is no such thing as a free Lunch!
Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than
you can do it yourself. . . .
. . . In this 'very important' election year, listen closely to what the
candidates are promising you - just maybe, you will be able to tell
who is about to slam the gate on America.
Leaving aside the nasty Manchurian candidate overtone at the end (I can't help imagining Obama as a mustache-twirling villain, locking the door and turning around with a triumphant, "I've got you now, Little Nell!" as the country trembles in its petticoats), this, of course, is the meme that is beginning to spread from conservative circles. Woe unto us if a President Obama doesn't forsake his liberal, progressive policies, should he be elected! We're all doomed!
And that meme must be combatted. It's not enough to defeat specific conservatives in November; we have to discredit the great lurching zombie of conservatism itself.
What follows is my response to my friend. Enjoy, use it, add to it, whatever.
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I agree with your dad - it's time to slam the gates shut on the wild pigs who've been feasting at the trough of our tax dollars! Pigs like Halliburton, and Goldman Sachs, and AIG, and KBR, and Blackwater, and . . . well, I lose track of them after a while and just start counting little curly pink tails.
Some observations:
-- Funny, but I didn't see capital gains tax cuts or school vouchers in that list of "free corn" boondoggles.
-- Sometimes government is actually the best and most cost-effective way to do things. Medicare, a government program that Republicans want to kill, is far less expensive and more efficient than any private insurance plan. Only 3% of its budget goes to cover admin costs, versus 25-30% for private insurers.
-- If we had privatized Social Security the way Bush wanted to, thousands or possibly millions of seniors would be unable to retire after their life savings was wiped out in the market this month.
-- The US Postal Service - a government agency - charges 43 cents to take a letter anywhere in the country in a matter of days. FedEx charges $20 for the same service.
-- The response to Katrina, Gustav, and Ike was hamstrung in large part because the Bushies gutted FEMA and outsourced everything to private corporations. Those corporations didn't send ice, water, first aid, trailers, etc, in until far too late, because actually sending in supplies would decrease their profits.
-- The same people who cry "socialism" when we suggest that perhaps the wealthy should pay incrementally more tax (say, an extra 3% on everything they make over a certain cutoff - let's call it $250K) than the rest of us, don't have the same qualms about handing out our tax dollars to prop up "private" companies in the "free" market whose philosophy seems to be "Privatize the profits, socialize the losses."
-- Taxes are the membership dues we pay to live in a country that's worth living in. Another way to think of them is as insurance against the worst things that can happen in life. Taxes pay for cops to keep the streets safe; firefighters to stop your house from burning down; a social safety net to keep people from going hungry; and the good schools that make neighborhoods desirable to homebuyers. We pay less for publicly funded services because the chances that any one person will need to use them is spread over a much larger group. You might never have to call the police or the fire department, or collect unemployment, in your entire lifetime; but you sleep better knowing those things are there if you need them. What if the fire department asked for a credit card before they'd come save your house?
-- Some things are worth doing as a people, using our tax dollars, because they're intrinsically valuable and so important for society that their cost is almost beside the point. You know, things like clean water, lead-free toys, safe food, and bridges that don't collapse. Those things are called the commons.
-- The Bush administration has presided over the largest increase in the size of the federal government in our nation's history - only a small part of which has to do with the DHS. So which candidate is your dad for, again?
Or maybe your dad is saying we're the pigs, and the corn is the Bush tax cuts and McCain's maverickiness, and the fence is the Patriot Act and the warrantless wiretapping program? In that case, I'd say he's right on. The gate has already been slammed shut on us. Now there's nothing to do but start tunneling under the fence.
Who knows? Maybe we'll find a truffle or two along the way.