It's an article about criminals trying to game the system in court: the disingenuous insanity plea has been a feature of Hollywood court dramas and other movies forever. There's nothing new here.
Here is a nice quote from the article though:
> “This is such a fraught area, and it’s prone to hype and overstatement,”
1. No, you can't have an abortion for any reason (rape, abuse, etc.). OR do you mean you can have one, as long as you can afford it.
2. You can't have rehab for any reason it's your fault for doing something dumb. OR is it that you can go to rehab only if you can afford it.
3. You can't have healthcare for any reason. OR is it that you can have healthcare if you can afford it. OR is it only free if you aren't overweight, sit too much, stand too much, floss twice daily and only ever eat fruits and veggies.
4. Financial assistance should only be accessible to the rich. Or is it meant to be accessible to the poor, but they must pay for it?
Certainly, most people, even gasp liberals, tend to ride some middle ground.
1. Abortion is only acceptable in the cases of rape and the mother's life being in danger. Abortion as post-pregnancy contraceptive is totally unacceptable. The correct course is to mandate adoption (in the case the mother doesn't want it) instead, expand adoption opportunity and lower adoption barrier to entry.
2. Patients going through rehab should not simply receive it for free. They should have to "give back" by helping the next generation of addicts via volunteer work.
3. Healthcare should be subsidized more for those who strive to live healthy lives. The people that eat right, exercise, etc, should have higher priority at the doctor and more healthcare-related benefits than people who are overweight, non-exercising, drug-abusing, etc.
4. Financial assistance should not be unconditional. It should be accessible only after the the applicant has gone through financial counselling and taken steps to become more responsible over their finances, learned to budget and eliminate waste from their expenses.
That is how to keep people accountable for their actions while also providing a way out.
I, a progressive, value personal freedom and want society to support that.
What choices people make with their one shot on earth is up to them. If a handful make choices I don't agree with, I don't give a shit--they're still people are as deserving of the social safety net as anyone.
And that's what it comes down to. I don't care if people make choices I don't agree with. It's their choice, their body, their whatever. Society should work for them as much as it does me, or it's a shitty society.
Yet you also want me to subsidize the fixing of any consequences related to poor choices, no? In other words "Do whatever the heck you want. If you do something incredibly stupid, everyone will help you recover whether they want to or not."
> It's their choice, their body, their whatever.
But it's my tax money that will bail them out of the hole they get themselves in. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The liberal mindset does not reward personal responsibly - it punishes it. The responsible people have to foot the bill of the irresponsible.
I exactly want your tax dollars to subsidize behaviors you don't approve of. (Not relevant, but mine sure do, in the form of subsidies, funding the military, paying for the militarization of police, etc.) I want all of us to pay into a social safety net that doesn't discriminate.
I have absolutely zero sympathy to this repeated use of this phrase you love, "personal responsibility." Society is all about shared responsibility, and you'd do well to learn that.
This assertion nullifies your point. The part in parenthesis is obviously in no way implied, and is just hyperbolic rhetoric in an attempt to create a strawman. If you're interested in reasonable debate, I would suggest refraining from such tactics.
Give me an example of a liberal stance of one of the above issues that factors in personal responsibility. Hint: none of them do because universal healthcare* (*except for obese people and drug abusers and other people that didn't take care of their bodies) would be very unpopular. Ditto for all other services/stances.
It still amazes me how politicians who practically wear their absurd hypocrisies on their sleeves can manipulate entire population segments with this sort of puerile garbage.
If you think so, I think you're somewhat missing the point. Or arguing against one that isn't there.
To take your assertion to its logical end:
- system provides "universal" healthcare
- the above system therefore excuses personal responsibility for... healthcare access existing? I'm not really sure where this leads?
What you seem to be assuming is that an "irresponsible" actor impinges on service provision by virtue of their irresponsibility. Believe it or not, this is not an assumption rooted in reality. If it were, the US per capita healthcare budget would be much lower than that of France.