Collectively yours.

[alexandraerin]

Alright, I think that if anyone has been reading my work for any time at all, then they are sure to definitely know that pedantry is among a couple things I just won't put up with. But, I'm going to take a moment to address a somewhat pedantic point that I think is worth emphasizing:

The plural of "person" is "persons", not "people".

"People", you see, is a collective noun.

In day-to-day conversation, the distinction's hardly worth noting. But when the foundational legal document of our nation begins "We the People", I think it's important to reflect on what that means. Legal documents are one of the few places you will see "persons" being used on a regular basis, because it has a distinct meaning separate from "people".

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Not "We, a bunch of persons". "We the People".

They built an entire episode of Star Trek around this, folks. That's how important it is.

I believe in individual liberties. I believe in privacy and freedom from interference. I believe in the power of the market and the right of persons to individually and collectively utilize it. I believe that when this happens, there will be a general trend towards the betterment of all. The poorest segment of the population of the United States today are generally better off than the poorest segments of the population a century ago.

But I also believe that there are times when our individual strengths aren't enough, there are times when masses of persons following immediate and obvious self-interest conflicts with the common good, and that in those times, We the People must come together.

Imagine if we tried to run a country where each person was responsible for the safety of themselves, their families, their homes, and their possessions. I don't just mean a reasonable level of personal responsibility. I mean that there are no police, no fire departments, no armed forces... if your house is attacked, by robbers or murderers or religious zealots or people who want the land it occupies, you are on your own.

Could you live the life you now live if you were solely responsible for your own protection? Even if you think the answer is yes, do you think the society you live in and the benefits you enjoy from that society could exist under those conditions?

Sure, your answer might be that if the government just disappeared we could all just band together with our neighbors and establish patrols and watch groups and fire brigades and militias... you know, come together for the common defense and promote the general welfare and... hey, this is starting to sound familiar, isn't it?

We the People.

It's easy to get people to agree with the benefits of collectively facing some threats. When your neighbor's home is on fire, yours is in danger. When your neighbor's home is burgled, your home could be next. When your neighbor is threatened by tyranny, what's to stop that tyrant from doing the same to you?

So how about when your neighbor is sick with an infectious disease?

What about when your neighbor is bankrupted by paying for a surgery?

What about when your neighbor can't afford the surgery in the first place?

Sure, you might be thinking, "I can't catch a broken leg.", but if the economy falls, it's taking you with it, and each person taken out of work or rendered destitute is a blow to the economy.

This looks like a job for... We the People.

Using large corporations to insure us against the cost of health care services is a poor substitute for using our collective power as "We the People" to ensure that each of us the persons has access to health care.

I don't know how we can have domestic Tranquility, common defense, or general Welfare when we won't to come together as a People to ensure the health of our population.

Comments

[aniraangel.livejournal.com]

Can I just say, as an Aussie, that I do not understand America.

Honestly. WHO CARES IF IT'S CALLED COMMUNISM OR CAPITALISM OR WHATEVER? *headdesk* thisisnotthefifties.




Also, the freedom of speech thing is nice... but I like knowing that the government isn't inclined to let me die or drown in medical debt.

Once when I was 14 I asked my great Aunt (Aunty Duck) what she thought on communism and she smiled at me and said 'We all live in communities, Steph. Aren't we all communists a little?'

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

That's a great aunt who earned the title rather than resting on her laurels.

[aniraangel.livejournal.com]

She did. She's kind of all sorts of awesome, and she used to be the Matron at the Hospital (..Er. head Nurse? Do they have Matrons in the US?). I don't think she'd understand the American mindset towards health, either.

OT, but she is also an awesome poet/writer... maybe it's a mindset more common to the creative.

[stormcaller3801.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit hesitant to refer to this because I have not ever read it, but are you familiar with George Orwell's 1984? My understanding is that one of the most notable things in the book involves language and how it has been used to control people's reactions. Certain things are bad, certain things are good, you always, automatically stop when a police officer says "Halt!" because that's all you ever know.

Welcome to American politics. When I was in school it was taught to me very clearly- you had capitalism, which was best, and socialism, which was bad, and communism, which was even worse. I never quite got how we were both capitalist and democratic, but the USSR was only communist, but that wasn't important to the textbooks or the teachers. It was simply drilled into my head up til about the point the wall came down. The US was capitalist and best, the USSR was communist and worst, Europe was socialist and tragically misguided (and thus not as good as the US).

For some reason 'jingoism' never made it onto any vocabulary lists.

Communist and socialist and even liberal have all been transformed into words that cause a good portion of the American public to automatically think 'bad.' That's why the Republicans refer to the Democrats as liberals (and the RNC tried to relabel them the 'Democrat-Socialist Party'), but the Democrats use the term 'progressive.' If you're a liberal, you're far left. Out of the mainstream. Bad.

It's the same reason that 'facist' or 'totaltarian' or anything like that was ridiculous and unacceptable and offensive according to Republicans when applied to a Republican president, but held up as true and acceptable and free speech when applied to a Democrat president.

[aniraangel.livejournal.com]

I know what it is, but I wouldn't go so far to say I'm familiar with it. (Which I have no good reason for as I can get it free online from PG Australia since it's out of copyright here) I suppose what I meant I don't understand is how people can not ask why something is "bad". I've always asked... I was brought up to ask questions, I suppose.

I guess most people aren't.

I watch a lot of American TV (shows, news, a lot of it) and I'm still working out why being liberal is bad (it's actually a Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_of_Australia) in Australia.)and being a republican makes you an idiot... When the idea of communism came into my head when I was 14 and talking with a friend from Bulgaria the first though was '...but wasn't that supposed to be bad?'

I looked it up. Not quite the hellspawn it's supposed to be. I was, thus confused, but got disproving looks from my grandmother and that clever, thought out comment from my Great Aunt.

What it seems to add up to (imho) is people being too lazy to look things up and decide if they are what they're calling them, and if it really is that bad.... and I don't understand why something so important as government should be decided by people who are just throwing words around to scare people they know have been conditioned to dislike. People keep saying Obama is a socialist and I keep going '...and the problem with that is? please go be personally threatened elsewhere.'

Personally, I mostly envy the tech stuff in America. The rest of what happens makes me want to slam my head into brick walls mostly. I watched the whole inauguration of the President (real time) because I was concerned someone would be an idiot, turns out the idiot was a hat. All's good.



Also. Fox News scares me O_O

...if any of that made sense? I have a mixed up thought process ><;

[stormcaller3801.livejournal.com]

Liberal is bad because people tell you it's bad. And they're people you trust, because they have the same values you do. They can't be wrong because they keep saying it, and other people agree with them, and they can point out things that prove it. Proof by their own criteria, without any independent fact-checking. People who agree because they get more power that way. Values you know they have because they said so.

It's all a game of words, and it doesn't change. The words change, the implications change, but the game remains the same. The end result remains the same. Good and bad, right and wrong- there's some points we all agree on, but for many things all the evidence simply boils down to someone telling someone else, and being trusted on it. Even the burden of proof becomes part of the game- the study you use as proof doesn't stand up to scrutiny because of this problem. The study I use doesn't stand up to scrutiny because of that problem. The margin of error is too large, the sample size is too small, we shouldn't do anything until there's more testing.

The mid-20th century cemented American cynicism and paranoia. The rise of the Religious Right and the strategies to grab the South helped polarize things. The unions, populism, and the mantra of corporate greed pushed from the other side. We've been playing on fear, doubt, and hate for decades, if not centuries. We blame everything on the other guy. We condemn because we are told to by people we trust because we are told to.

It's not hard to see why there are countries who hate the US; we've done a brilliant job of not only learning to hate everyone else, but hate ourselves as well.

[stormcaller3801.livejournal.com]

Here's an excellent example of our political processes.

[sephiraraynes.livejournal.com]

"Honestly. WHO CARES IF IT'S CALLED COMMUNISM OR CAPITALISM OR WHATEVER? *headdesk* thisisnotthefifties."

http://theangryblackwoman.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/gopdiversity.jpg

http://theangryblackwoman.com/2009/08/27/let-them-have-their-great-white-hope/(Got this pic from here)

That's a lot of older white dudes. Now, AngryBlackWoman was pointing out their WASPness. Which is all well and good, it definitely needed to be addressed. (Oh boy did it need to be addressed.)

But I'd like to point out their age, as well. I'm not a very good judge of age by any means, granted. And I could easily be wrong about this. But just for the sake of argument:

Maybe they actually are stuck in the fifties. They're stuck in the McCarthy era. They're stuck in the Red Scare. And this wouldn't be the first time the US as a whole and sections of the population in particular were stuck in Cold War, anti-Communism, ultra-capitalist thinking. You're probably thinking I'm talking about Bush neo-conservative folks. But really, we did this stuff in the Gulf War. (Yes that was Bush Sr. and no, I don't know a lot about Bush Sr. era dudes. Just humor me, m'kay?) And of course we continued to do it with Afghanistan and Iraq.

So maybe, for these people, it still is the fifties. And maybe someday they'll finally realize its not the fifties anymore, and its not Us vs. Them anymore, and not Baseball, Democracy, and Warm Apple Pie anymore. And I think a lot of them have. Its why they're the fringe, and why they shout so loudly to be heard. They think they're the only sane people in a sea of insanity. Don't you see, they cry. What you propose isn't 'bad policy' its downright evil. These are evil things. But the amount of truly good and truly evil things could dance on the head of a pin.

I'm a little afraid we'll have to wait for them to die before these ideas will go away. And even then, there will still be a few of their disciples that learned at their feet, but perhaps by then be so extremist as to only be known from their gif and bright-color laden free hosted webpages.

P.S. Your aunt is awesome.

[aniraangel.livejournal.com]

...that is a lot of old white blokes. Did they have a gift shop where they got those matching cowboy hats?


I suppose I had failed to consider the amount of time freezing (Piper in Charmed, if you will) people are willing to do in their minds. Apparently, a lot. Those folks certainly do look like they're old enough to have at least been raised in the 50's. My Aunt was alive in the 50's and either America was particularly crazy and Australia reasonably sane... or she's just realised people are people and need to be taken care of, I don't know.

I do know she remarked something about her mother not approving of communism, because Aunty Duck said she told her the same thing she told me, more or less.

Leads me to think that it's not just in the raising... or that there might be hope that more people will wake up and smell the lack of 50's. :D

The problem with calling things evil is that you start making monsters out of tiny, stupid things which means people start thinking there is a lot of stuff hiding in the shadows, and IT'S OUT TO GET YOU, MAN. (or is that 70's paranoia? >D) Which leads to the shouting and sometimes not so virtual pissing contests when it comes to arguing about what's evil and what's good.


...that is more than a little frightening, really. But there is a downside to free speech and such. It means you have to cope with the loons who are in the wrong decade.

She is :D

...should not comment at 5 am. please forgive any extra insanity. Think of it like sprinkles.

[stormcaller3801.livejournal.com]

It's also a matter of location. In as much as I'm hesitant to draw any hard lines, the truth of the matter is that when you start examining where votes come from, where the most tolerance is for people who are different, there's a definite trend. It's easy to hate people who are far away, whom you've never met. But when you get into metropolitan centers, particularly as you get around places that draw people from all over, such as public universities, you get into areas that favor liberal views.

It was said that when the Iranian election fraud came about, an American-Iranian war was out of the question. Why? Because it drove home the fact that Tehran is not that different. The people are not that different. The problems are not that different. There's always the willfully ignorant set, but it changed from 'that country,' which was a nebulous idea incarnated in its leadership, to 'the people of Iran,' who looked normal, had normal problems, worked and played and traveled and, in videos, bled on streets that could have been anywhere in the US.

I think that's part of it, and part of the problem. I think it's a real trend, and it's part of why people have an unspecified dread about ideas like homeschooling. It's why liberal thinking seems to be concentrated in academia, whereas conservative thinking tends to come more from rural areas and small towns and groups where everyone is in tightly bonded, insular groups.

When you're used to things being different all around you, different doesn't seem so bad. It seems worth trying, at least.