Conservatives, of which I used to consider myself to be (I’d call myself a libertarian conservative these days) love these sorts of memes and are constantly posting them on FB to show their “Patriotism” and undying support for our soldiers. So the question posed, if you can read it in the picture is, “Should Veterans Get Free Healthcare for Life?” to which my firm reply is, NO!
The caption just below the pic said “Our veterans risked everything for OUR freedom. Should they get free healthcare for life??”
How exactly did they risk everything for our freedom if our freedom was not at stake, would be my question? Just because someone calls it “patriotism” doesn’t mean that it is. Why should I be made to pay for the healthcare of a class of people who were sent into wars that I had no voice in deciding whether or not such a venture should be undertaken. If anyone is obligated to pay for the healthcare of veterans it should be the politicians who sent them into these ill advised and endless wars of U.S. military hegemony of the planet. Let them pay for it out of their own pockets.
Do I sacrifice my principles upon the alter of sentimentality? NO, I do not.
Welfare and socialism are contrary to the principles of liberty, property, freedom and free markets and are antithetical to them because they require the expropriation of one group of people for the benefit another. Why should the government caste receive benefits at my expense, especially benefits that I don’t receive myself? Doesn’t the government already exact taxes from us to pay for such programs as Social Security; Medicaid and Medicare? And don’t they already expropriate the fruits of our labors for their own self-made benefits for themselves for their own retirements and healthcare programs?
If our country was actually attacked by Iraq; Libya; Afghanistan; Syria or any other of the plethora of countries where we have military actions on going then, there might be an argument for healthcare benefits for those who are actually wounded defending our country but even then, which of us would not take up arms to defend our homeland and should we then, once the conflict is over, demand that the government take care of us for the remainder of our lives at the expense of our fellow citizens? I doubt that anyone except the avowed Socialist would think so.
Nonetheless, I am certain, if not for the fact that the government already extracts so much of it’s citizen’s wealth that, many Americans would indeed help to support veterans both directly and through private organizations as some already do.
It’s a sorry state of affairs that so much of the public has bought into these false narratives created by Neo-cons whose primary motivation is to maintain massive military budgets for the support of the Military-Industrial-Complex and the U.S. Empire. Such mantras like the above and “we have to support our soldiers even if we’re against the war” or “they’re over there fighting for all we hold dear over here” or “they are over there defending the Constitution” are all ridiculous and untrue and are the tools of the State and it’s imperialist war mongers.
We must take off the blinders if there’s any hope of preserving even the slightest semblance of liberty, property and freedom. We must not be fooled into justifying the welfare state in any form and must guard against the use of sentimentalism being used as a tool to do so. I suppose the real question might be, do Americans really believe in the principles of individual liberty, property rights, free markets and freedom? I’m afraid that either too few actually do or too few understand those principles at all.