It’s an uphill battle, and as long as the MSM runs the country, and Americans keep their children in propaganda machines we call “public schools”, I don’t see a lot of hope. We need a handful of wealthy conservatives (are there any left?) to purchase a media outlet, and run it in order to have a venue for truth. Fox News is better than nothing, but it isn’t much. Greta Van Susteren’s show is not educative, and O’Reilly is inconsistent and unable to be the vessel for informing the public as to the tradeoffs. Although I like Sean Hannity, he doesn’t seem able to make his case well, and with the constant shouting matches on the show, the audience is not hearing a coherent message. Conservatism has yet to be articulated clearly on television within the constraints of a commercial format. Reagan is the only person I remember who could make the right points, and do it on TV.

The idiot who blames Reagan for blowing it in the latter term fails to recognize as so many Americans do that the President does not control Congress, cannot force idiots in his own party to do the right thing, and has no influence with those not in his party. It’s easy and ignorant to hold Presidents accountable for every government action which occurs during his terms.

http://georgereisman.com/blog/2008/10/myth-that-laissez-faire-is-responsible.html

Given that the current financial crisis was not caused by deregulation then what exactly is your point?

It was, in fact, caused primarily by the actions of the Fed in lowering the interest rate far below its natural level by pumping lots of easy money into the banking system.

If this text is in italics, then it means you can just use the standard HTML “i” tags.

And if this is blockquoted, it means the “blockquote” tag can be used.

[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It .is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth.”

Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).

John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com

Recovering Republican

JLof@aol.com

substitute the word “financial” for the word “medical” above.

and good luck trying to make the argument that what the US needs now is LESS regulation because a really free market would cure our horrible health care system. your timing is VERY bad.

first: #25 how is Jason’s remark worthy of “Bingo”? how can universal health care (UHC) be free? someone must pay. one can’t propose UHC without addressing who will pay. i’m thinking “others” will pay. (that would be all of us. oh, noes!)

Are you aware of the percentage of Americans who don’t pay taxes? If UHC is funded by income tax, then yes, a large number of people will receive “free health care” at the expense of those who do pay taxes.

I think we’re also missing the point here. The excessive cost of health care is usually cited as justification for UHC - which acts to completely bypass THE fundamental question of “why is health care so expensive in the first place?”

In other words, wouldn’t it be better to take steps to encourage the lowering of health care costs, instead of using the situation to add yet another unwelcome layer of enforced collectivization upon us?

The reason why health care costs so much in America is because there are so many mandates and regulations imposed upon the industry, it has no chance of benefiting from the same forces of free competition which have made virtually every other aspect of technology affordable and accessible to us.

Even the poorest households in the U.S. have T.V.’s, DVDs, refrigerators and microwaves. Most have a lot more. I have no doubt that this would not be the case if the market for consumer appliances had been subject to the same level of bureaucratic restrictions over the last 50 years. The truth is, we do not have freedom of choice when it comes to health care coverage. It is not a free consumer market. If it were, health care would be a lot more affordable.

There is also the issue that no matter how cheap health care is, there are still those who will choose, of their own free will, to maintain warped priorities throughout their lives - budgeting for cigarettes, booze, drugs, video games and other non-essentials without budgeting for their own health. This should be of no concern to the state or anyone else. Similarly, if someone smokes, drinks to excess or abuses drugs, they should pay higher premiums. Will such people be made to pay a higher rate of tax should UHC come into existence? I doubt it. There is nothing “fair” about socialization of any kind.

One more point - another factor in the cost of health care in the U.S. as opposed to elsewhere is the level of research and development which goes on here. Seriously - what percentage of new medical innovation do you suppose comes out of Canada, Britain or France as opposed to the U.S.? I’ll give you a clue - it’s very very small.