Letters to the Editor
Taliesan
Published Letters: 868 Editor's Choice: 16
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AlecsMom
[Read the article: The quest for universal healthcare]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Look, I deal with a lot of businesses in my line of work.
This gives me a certain insight into how people operate with money.
There is a real psychological pull away from giving the government any of it. It is in part the feeling, as you said, of "Why must I pay more than the next guy" and in part people just not liking the idea of supporting the system.
The thing is, sometimes supporting the system works out cheaper.
Toyota did their sums on this and found that building a second Canadian plant was cheaper than operating in the USA, in part because of the cost of healthcare. It is one of the reasons why a lot of big corporations support socialised medicine - it just works out cheaper in the end.
Take the whole issue of uninsured people not going to the doctor, what happens is instead of them getting sick and getting treatment, they get really, really sick, end up in the emergency ward.
Then you have the people who think they are insured, who find out that they are only as insured as their insurers are generous. They are normally the ones who end up going bankrupt - and the number 1 cause of bankruptcy in America is healthcare.
Add to that, inspectors out to make sure you aren't scamming them into saving your life from something you aren't insured for, stringent advertising campaigns (And the costs involved) and the profit motive, you end up with a highly expensive system.
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AJCalhoun
[Read the article: How Obama won Wisconsin ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Your point is valid to an extent.
The thing is that MAD, generally deals with most other forms of extremist - with the religious extremist, wars become holy wars and Mutually Assured Destruction is less of a deterrent.
Particularly if you have the really, really scary ones - the rapturists. Forget everything about Muslims, in America there is a small group of Christians that actually wants the apocalypse.
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AlecsMom
[Read the article: The quest for universal healthcare]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Better evironmental standards would help too, I mean just look at Port Arthur - nobody should have to live like that.
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My criticisms of religion
[Read the article: Are you going to hell?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am sure people find comfort in their religion, the thing is it hasn't actually done anything much for us.
It turned medicine into a theoretical science right up until the plague, which really heralded the start of the enlightenment.
It retarded scientific growth in every avenue it has appeared in, from basic geography in the middle ages, to genetics today.
It hasn't prevented bad people being bad people and it hasn't made good people good people. People, on a whole, are people - whatever their beliefs.
It is a force of ignorance, not understanding in that it teaches people to believe things without evidence. The ideal of faith, when applied to any other aspect of your life is termed not a virtue, but being a gullible fool.
If you believe that nice chap from Nigeria wants your help to move his funds from his country and really just needs your bank details to do it, then you are showing faith in his claims.
Now people cite charities as being an example of faith doing good, well by the same token the Mafia was wonderful in the 1930's, when it operated soup kitchens in the midst of its extortion rackets.
There is very little difference between extortion and threatening non-believers with hell.
Morally speaking, we are far more advanced in this day of secularism, than states which are highly religious such as Saudi Arabia, where it was world pressure, not internal disgust, which led to a woman not being beaten for the crime of being raped.
When Christianity had a similar degree of power, the world was rife with witchhunts and slavery. The so-called Christian states don't do that anymore, because religion is no longer really accepted as a legal argument.
This is not to say that religion leads to immorality, but rather that it does nothing to prevent it and slows any movement towards true morality - by offering convenient scapegoats.
The devil made me do it, the gays are out to get us, them dirty secularists are corrupting our children and even the focus on new media, be it Shakespeare's theatre or computer games are all scapegoats offered by religious leaders.
These scapegoats offer religious people a way of not focussing on their real problems. It is so much easier to find someone else to blame for your kid being a little psycho, than to face the idea that you might be a rotten parent or the kid might just be a rotten kid.
Further, religion seems to encourage the worst impulses of second-hand martyrs. As religious people are crying about those nasty atheists writing books, atheists are having their cars keyed, police officers refusing to protect atheist marches, being deprived of their right to meet other atheists if they are in the military.
Indeed, one case had an athletic atheist schoolchild being taken off of a sports team, because she wouldn't pray with the other children. When CNN ran the story it followed it with a debate, in which no atheists were allowed, and the consensus was that the atheists should "Shut the hell up."
In fact, GHW Bush was elected to office after saying that he didn't believe atheists qualified as being American citizens.
And all of this while Christians whine about "Happy Holidays" in their shopping malls and no forced prayer in school.
So when people write that religion can be a positive and valuable aspect to someone's life, I argue the reverse. And I am not going to "shut the hell up" any time soon.
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johnnyrandom
[Read the article: Are you going to hell?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Isn't he made of linguine?