[MD] How far do you go to preserve individual life?

[Andre Broersen]

  Platt to Andre:

This makes sense to me. I personally hope that through the mechanism of 
politics our society decides to not regress to failing socialist health 
programs but rather encourage evolution through responses to Dynamic 
Quality a free market provides.

Andre:
Hi Platt. I am glad my post makes sense to you. I cannot, however, make 
much sense of your concluding remarks. I am not sure what you mean by 
'[failing] socialist health programs'. Do you designate a culture which, 
through its political processes, provides affordable basic health cover 
to all its citizens, as being 'socialist'?

I am aware that many Americans have, traditionally, had a love/hate 
relationship with the Federal principle (as Northrop calls it): He observes:
'It is to the moral,the religious, and the political consequences of 
John Locke's philosophical conception of man and nature that Thomas 
Jefferson gives expression in the Declaration of Independence. In short, 
the traditional culture of the United States is an applied utopia in 
which the philosophy of John Locke defines the idea of the good.
'Locke's political philosophy made the preservation of private property 
the sole justification for the existence of government, thereby 
rendering unconstitutional any majority legislation which curbed working 
conditions or business practices in the interests of human rights or 
social needs (p71)

'Similarly, the laissez-faire economic theory prescribed it to be 
unsound to prevent in any way the free play of individualistic action 
regardless of the social consequences, and required that laborers be 
treated, not from the standpoint of their value as human beings, but 
from the standpoint of the exchange value of their labor in a 
competitive free market'( The Meeting of East and West p 136)

It is against this background that I understand your position. You are 
placing working conditions and business practices (and their interests) 
and individualistic action above human rights and social consequences 
and needs. This view sees human beings as commodities whose value is 
determined by their exchange value. This, Platt, sounds like you render 
full support to the mechanisms of the Giant.

(have you already forgotten the Lehman Brothers, to name just one of 
many enlightened banking institutions, ...as responsible for the 
world-wide financial crisis...except China?)

It explains your earlier response a bit better. It seems the 
preservation of human life, for you, is predicated upon the value of 
their possible intellectual contribution or on the value of their 
re-cycle-able parts. Commodity exchange and not the simple value of the 
fact that they are human beings being human.

Seems to me that Obama's program, with its careful restrictions, is an 
attempt to assert intellectual values as guiding social ones instead of 
letting society be guided by mindless traditions. (LILA,p224)

By all means have free enterprise, but let this enterprise be dominated 
by human values (not capital values) and let Dynamic Quality reign. (I 
didn't put this very well but you get my sentiment, I hope).

Amen....imho of course.