america

The concept of individualism is very strong 

Individualism and Free-Thinking

Individualism and the incredibly vague concept of "freedom" discussed above also influence the obsession Americans seem to have with being free-thinkers or nonconformists rather than being one of the "sheep," and there is this fear of being "indoctrinated" or "brainwashed" into this mob of faceless, nameless people who don't think for themselves. This fear can be seen as very similar to xenophobia, yellow peril, and the Red Scare because both involve the fear of some invading force or "other" that assimilates people, taking their identity and changing them to the point that they no longer resemble what they once were and are now part of that faceless and nameless hoard that took them in the first place. While I do believe it is important to think freely (to me that means being critically self-aware and having an open mind, critical thinking skills, and the ability to articulate why you believe the things that you do), being a free-thinker just to feel smart and superior to others isn't something anyone should strive for, and simply being a free-thinking person doesn't mean you're correct about anything. 

Certain people (mainly conservatives) mistake free-thinking for just rejecting whatever appears to be popular, widely supported, "mainstream," talked about on cable news, or supported by science, and assume that makes their beliefs right because they thought of it all on their own. Yes, being a free-thinker can be defined as thinking outside the box, but everything outside the box should be held to the same level of skepticism and inquiry as what's inside rather than being accepted simply because it's outside the box and not reflected by authority or anything else. Being a free thinker doesn't mean you should also free yourself of the influence of logic, reason, rationality, and good judgment. Free-thinking isn't a free pass to choose whatever explanations for things you like best. Furthermore, while free-thinking does involve forming opinions independent of authority, tradition, or established beliefs, that doesn't mean immediately rejecting anything that may support authority, tradition, or established beliefs. 

• What it seems like most people who identify themselves as "free thinkers" do is formulate an opinion on something, typically one that they want to believe is true or whatever opinion is most convenient for them to believe, and then they do research to find whatever evidence there is out there that can reinforce this opinion and cling to it, often going deeper down whatever conspiracy rabbit hole nonsense they've found. This is very similar to the behavior I described regarding reactionary conservatives on the Modern Conservatism page and honestly, I'm really not sure if there's any major difference between the two. I suppose the main difference is that reactionary conservatives make that initial gut reaction to something their opinion on something whereas the kind of people I am describing here will just think about something whenever and allow their mind to wander over a period of time. 

Basically what I am saying here is just like being a contrarian doesn't automatically make someone correct, and being a free thinker by rejecting whatever is "mainstream" doesn't automatically make you correct. Thus, I think we should place more value on being a free-thinker to identify, understand, and solve the complex issues the world is facing rather than valuing simply being a free-thinker because it makes you different and not one of the "sheep." 

So, how does this relate to individualism? Being a "free-thinker" in the way I described above gives people an easy rationale for rejecting what they see as conformity, giving them a greater sense of individuality since they're not a "conformist" or "sheep" that has no individuality. It's an easy (but stupid) way to manufacture individuality and basically like the people who make not liking a popular thing their entire personality, only taken to an extreme. 

A government's role is to protect the rights of citizens. Since the Declaration of Independence promises the right to life, healthcare in America should be affordable, accessible, and quality since healthcare is essential to maintaining life. 

You may be thinking I'm a hypocrite for saying this while also being pro-choice. Well, keeping in mind fetuses are not US citizens (citizenship is granted at or after birth) and they aren't really immigrants either, the US government has no obligation to them. Additionally, as I explain in further detail on the Abortion page, any right to life the fetus may have does not supersede the host's right to bodily autonomy (like how the government cannot force citizens to donate blood or organs even though they can save lives) and in some cases, an individual's right to life and decisions regarding their life is given to family if they are totally incapable of making decisions themselves and rely on some other entity to keep them alive. 

The Case for Medicare for All

Medicare for all could save money if properly implemented and help out a lot of Americans. 

Research from PLOS Medicine - "Projected costs of single-payer healthcare financing in the United States: A systematic review of economic analyses"

• Please not that the study uses "single-payer" as a synonym for Medicare for all.

• After reviewing 90 works related to healthcare in the US - "We reviewed 90 studies and included primary analyses of 22 single-payer plans from 18 studies, published between 1991 and 2018, including 8 national and 14 state-level plans" - the authors of this research concluded that "We found that 19 (86%) of the analyses predicted net savings (median net result was a savings of 3.46% of total costs) in the first year of program operation and 20 (91%) predicted savings over several years; anticipated growth rates would result in long-term net savings for all plans." So based on the studies and data they looked at, properly implementing medicare for all would net savings in the first year of the program and net savings in the long-run. 

• " All studies estimate lower costs due to simplified payment administration, but vary in the size of these savings"

• "In the long term, projected net savings increase, due to a more tightly controlled rate of growth."

• The study reviewed 22 different, credible, economic models of single-payer financing in the US and found that "19 (86%) predict net savings in the first year of operations, with a range from 7% higher net cost to 15% lower net cost."

  • "The largest net savings were for plans with reductions in drug costs. Net savings accumulate over time at an estimated 1.4% per year."

• Overall, "These analyses suggest that single-payer can save money, even in year 1, incorporating a wide range of assumptions about potential savings."

• The research concludes "In this systematic review, we found a high degree of analytic consensus for the fiscal feasibility of a single-payer approach in the US."

  • "There is near-consensus in these analyses that single-payer would reduce health expenditures while providing high-quality insurance to all US residents.

  • To achieve net savings, single-payer plans rely on simplified billing and negotiated drug price reductions, as well as global budgets to control spending growth over time.

  • Replacing private insurers with a public system is expected to achieve lower net healthcare costs."

Study from the Political Economy Research Institute - "Economic Analysis of Medicare for All"

• In the abstract, this study identifies that in 2017 the US was spending $3.24 trillion on personal healthcare but other high income countries spend around 40% less and produce better healthcare outcomes. Medicare for all would reduce healthcare spending by nearly 10% to $2.93 trillion and create "stable access to good care for all US residents."

• The study gives a good explanation regarding what medicare for all is and the goals: "The primary goal of Medicare for All is to provide high-quality health care to all U.S. residents. This includes full coverage for the 8.8 percent of the population that is presently uninsured and the 26 percent of the population that is underinsured. Medicare for All also aims to provide stable access to decent coverage to all U.S. residents, including those who currently receive adequate care but may face difficulties at later points."

• "our results show that Medicare for All can promote both lower costs and greater equity in the financing of health care in the United States."

• Among the main findings of the study are that other countries which have implemented some kind of universal healthcare generate better outcomes than the current system in the US.

  • "It is also the case that, on balance, other countries that provide universal health care generate superior health outcomes relative to the U.S. Another 2017 study summarizes some key evidence as follows: 'In other countries, a shift to universal health care has been associated with reduced mortality. Specifically, 34 countries score higher than the USA on the Health Access and Quality Index, a metric based on amenable mortality, or death that could be averted with medical care. All of these countries provide a form of universal care.'"

• In regard to the cost saving potential under medicare for all, the study identifies that "through implementation of Medicare for All, overall costs of providing full health care coverage to all U.S. residents could fall by about 19 percent in the first year of full operations relative to spending levels under the existing system."

  • The breakdown of the savings is as follows: "1) administration (9.0 percent savings in total system costs); 2) pharmaceutical pricing (5.9 percent savings in system costs); and 3) establishing uniform Medicare rates for hospitals, physicians, and clinics (2.8 percent savings in system costs)." This totals up to 17.7% savings and the other savings which would make this total add up to the aforementioned 19% would be achieved by addressing"1) unnecessary services; 2) inefficiently delivered services; 3) missed prevention opportunities; and 4) fraud," which would lead to savings of 1.5% (Figure 1 below).

• The study identifies two sources which could/would be sourced to finance medicare for all: current revenue sources and a multitude of other sources. Current revenue sources account for $1.88 trillion, meaning the extra ~$1.05 trillion (the study assumes $1.08 trillion for the purposes of analysis) would need to come from other sources the study identifies like cutting business healthcare premiums by 8% relative to existing spending per worker, a 3.75% sales tax on non-necessities, a net worth tax of 0.38%, and taxing long-term capital gains as ordinary income (see page 9 of the study for more in-depth analysis).

  • Current revenue sources: "The first is the same public health care revenue sources that presently provide about 60 percent of all U.S. health care financing. These include Medicare and Medicaid, which together finance nearly 40 percent of all health care funding. It also includes tax subsidies for health care expenditures by individuals and households, which equal about 10 percent of total funding."

  • The multitude of other sources: "There are multiple ways through which the U.S. federal government could raise $1.08 trillion in additional revenues to finance Medicare for All. We examine here one set of new measures that would be capable of generating a total of $1.08 trillion in an equitable and efficient matter. But we emphasize that additional approaches could also be workable." 

• When looking at the impact on families, low and middle income families would see their healthcare spending reduced by anywhere from 0.8% to14% (Figure 2). 

• On a macroeconomics level, the study reports that, over a 10 year period in which healthcare is 15.8% of America's GDP (as opposed to 17.2% as it is now), implementing medicare for all would raise productivity thanks to improved health outcomes, support greater income equality, and support job creation (see page 16 of the study for further analysis). 

Research from the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management - "Does Medicare Coverage Improve Cancer Detection and Mortality Outcomes?"

• After extracting data from multiple sources on cancer detection and mortality, cancer screening, insurance coverage, and access to care in the United States on the population level by age this study found that medicare coverage is associated with improvements in cancer mortality at age 65 (the age of near universal eligibility for medicare). 

  • "This nearly universal Medicare coverage increased cancer detection by 50 per 100,000 population, a 10 percent increase compared to people aged 63 to 64"

  • "The increases we find in cancer detection and routine cancer screening capture only some of the possible mechanisms through which Medicare could reduce cancer mortality. Some patients whose lives were extended by an avoided cancer death at age 65 may have been diagnosed prior to age 65. For these patients, Medicare could provide access to needed treatment for an already diagnosed condition. Other patients who became diagnosed and treated upon gaining Medicare coverage may have already had symptoms of cancer. These patients would have become diagnosed by confirmatory testing, rather than by routine cancer screening."

  • "Improvements in cancer mortality after the onset of nearly universal Medicare coverage are plausible"

• The study concludes with "In conclusion, access to Medicare insurance was associated with a significant increase in detection of cancers with recommended screening, as well as a decline in mortality from these cancers among women. Our estimates provide new evidence of Medicare's impact on health outcomes for people in need of medical care."

What I aim to do in this section is briefly dispel the notion that America was founded on Christian values or anything like that, but instead on liberalism which was incredibly progressive for its time, and we even see the American Revolution and the idea that Americans were going to set out to govern themselves often described as a "radical" idea (WBM link) because at the time it was. In particular, the founding fathers were influenced a lot by the works of the "father of liberalism" John Locke, and the Enlightenment ideology that birthed liberalism.

Perhaps Locke's most influential theory to early America was that a ruler gains authority through the consent of the governed. This is obviously readily apparent in the American revolution, as the British colonists rejected monarchy and established a government in which a ruler is granted authority through an election (the consent of the governed - citizens vote for who they want to have authority and the candidate with the most votes wins, achieving the consent of the governed to hold an authoritative position). Obviously, America still holds elections today.

It should be noted that liberalism was born out of the European Enlightenment - an intellectual and philosophical movement throughout the 18th century. In his work "The Historic Origins of Liberalism," author Christopher Dawson states that "This movement, which was already known as the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, and the accompanying ideology, which later acquired the name of Liberalism, have long been studied by historians chiefly in Germany and France, though in a somewhat piecemeal fashion; but their work has not hitherto been fully assimilated by educated opinion in England and America." In this work, Dawson asserts that the Age of Enlightenment was an intellectual revolution that birthed a political revolution - liberalism. Dawson also attributes the intellectual revolution of the Enlightenment to Western culture: "it is this intellectual revolution that is responsible for the secularization of Western culture." Anthony Arblaster, author of "The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism," echoes this sentiment, but goes further back in history to the Renaissance. He writes (WBM link) "The development of modern liberalism is dated from the Renaissance. For it is not until that period that we find the development on a significant scale of the view of humanity and the world which forms the indispensable philosophical core of modern liberalism. That core is individualism, and an unprecedented perception of the human person as an individual is a central feature of the Renaissance."

Arblaster identifies John Locke as one of the principal philosophers of liberalism and "Liberalism: A Short History" by Richard Allsop, which I use as a source for Arblaster's quotes, asserts that the concept of liberalism was established in the 17th century and firmly established as a political idea by the end of it: "However, Arblaster has argued that while Locke’s role as ‘the ideologist of the Whig settlement’ was important for the practical development of liberalism, ‘it is by virtue of his empiricist philosophy of knowledge that he takes his place among the principal philosophers of liberalism.’ Certainly, the events and thinking of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, culminating in the Glorious Revolution and John Locke, meant that by 1700 liberalism the concept, if not the word, was firmly established as a political ideal by the end of the tumultuous seventeenth century." 

In an article published in The Objective Standard (WBM link) aptly titled "John Locke: The Father of Liberalism", the author asserts that "The distinctive social and political philosophy of the Enlightenment enshrined liberty, so the system of thought that men developed to support and defend it became known as liberalism."  That is to say, the Enlightenment created an environment in which the philosophy and ideology of liberalism could arise. John Locke was a tenet of this Enlightenment, and Thomas Jefferson described him, along with Sir Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon, as the “trinity of the three greatest men the world had ever produced,” and he relied heavily on Locke’s Two Treatises on Government in his drafts for the Declaration of Independence. In a letter to Benjamin Rush (WBM link), Jefferson wrote that "another incident took place on the same occasion which will further delineate Hamilton’s political principles. The room being hung around with a collection of the portraits of remarkable men, among them were those of Bacon, Newton & Locke. Hamilton asked me who they were. I told him they were my trinity of the three greatest men the world had ever produced, naming them." Locke's importance to the American revolution cannot be understated: the leader of the Sons of Liberty Samuel Adams "Adams bolstered his arguments for the rights of American colonists with near direct quotations of Locke. Alexander Hamilton chastised an adversary for his apparent ignorance of natural rights theory and recommended that he read Locke. John Adams cited Locke as an inspiration for his 'revolution-principles,' which he said were 'the principles of nature and eternal reason' and constituted a rational alternative to docile obedience and bloody anarchy,'" according to The Objective Standard article. Benjamin Franklin also relied heavily on Locke's work on education, history, and laws when he went about establishing the Philadelphia Academy (known today as the University of Pennsylvania).

For more on English philosopher John Locke's role in the development of liberalism, we turn to Milan Zafirovski's book "Liberal Modernity and Its Adversaries." In the book, Zafirovski asserts that "liberalism tends to create and promote civil society. Historically, civil society has been primarily the creation and project of liberalism or liberal modernity, especially the enlightenment" (Chapter 6, page 473). In defining classical liberalism Zafirovski states that "Originally, liberalism was a specifically Western, more precisely Western-European phenomenon since the Enlightenment and before, the Renaissance and classical civilization, distinguishing, Western society from the rest of the world" (Chapter 4). Zafirovski also identified that in western Europe liberalism resulted in an "explicitly dynamic" society following medieval traditionalism. Zafirovski identifies John Locke and liberalism as driving factors in America's independence: "Hence, in this sense, it was classical liberalism - both in the face of Jefferson et al. and in the sense of liberal European influences like Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau - rather than conservatism that really wrote 'the American Constitution,' notably the constitutional separation of church and state as well as the concepts of the 'pursuit of happiness,' social equality, and 'liberty and justice for all.'" Zafirovski asserts that Locke's works, most notably Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises on Government along with Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica are tenets of the English Enlightenment and date the movement. 

The Constitutional Rights Foundation (WBM link) also identifies Locke as a key influence in early American government, especially in regard to natural rights. The article identifies that Locke was a major influence, if not the influence, on the Declaration of Independence: "Most scholars today believe that Jefferson derived the most famous ideas in the Declaration of Independence from the writings of English philosopher John Locke. Locke wrote his Second Treatise of Government in 1689 at the time of England's Glorious Revolution, which overthrew the rule of James II."

ConstitutionalFacts.com (WBM link) identifies a key phrase in the Deceleration of Independence - "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" - as originating from Locke's work. The website states that Locke's work "influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, but most importantly, the American revolutionaries. Thomas Jefferson used the thoughts first penned by John Locke while writing the Declaration of Independence. The phrase 'life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness,' was an idea first considered by Locke in his Two Treatises on Government."

USHistory.org (WBM link) states that "The single most important influence that shaped the founding of the United States comes from JOHN LOCKE, a 17th century Englishman who redefined the nature of government."

Here is a specific excerpt from Locke's Two Treatises of Government (WBM link) that influenced early American government:

• "MEN being, as has been said, by nature all free, equal, and independent" (Book 2 Chapter 8)

The answer to this question really doesn't matter, but it is a fun thought experiment. 

It’s funny to think that today’s conservatives - the people who are fiercely loyal to their home country and love it, worship it even, the people who can't handle any criticism about their home country, the people that don’t think much of expanding what human rights can include, the people who eschew any changes to society and anything new, the people who despise liberalism - think they’d have anything in common with the American revolutionaries and founding fathers. There is a case to be made that the people who founded America have a lot in common with today's leftists because they both openly criticized their home country, protest against actions of their home country, aim to expand rights (revolutionaries expanded rights to include the right to free speech, expression, religion, etc... and today's leftists want to expand rights to clean water, higher education, a right to not be discriminated against, healthcare, housing, and more), and eschew a sense of nationalism or extreme loyalty to their home country. Additionally, America's founding documents were influenced by liberal ideology, ideas that were considered progressive at the time just like many of the ideas shared by leftists could be considered progressive. If the progressive ideals of the 1770s didn't prevail, there would be no America. Furthermore, it's very easy to imagine a British loyalist having the same "Don't like the colonies? Then leave, I'll help you pack!" attitude that The early American revolutionaries may not totally resemble the leftist/progressive ideals of today, but the views they had were the leftist/progressive ideals of their day. Of course, what passed for progressive in the 1700s was still incredibly oppressive because while people could vote to choose their leaders in elections, only a very specific demographic was able to do so, and slavery still existed, but you can't deny that it was at least slightly more progressive than the way other governments were structured at the time. 

The protests of the Summer of 2020 are a great example of how today's conservatives would have been on the British side of the Revolutionary War. In the Summer, people took to the streets to have their voices heard and protest against a system they felt treated people unjustly and unfairly, much like the American revolutionaries protested against what they felt was unfair and unjust treatment by the British. Conservatives obviously criticized these protests and eluded to a mob rule resulting from them and "radical leftists" or "Antifa." British loyalists did the same and feared these protests would lead to mob rule and tyranny. Sound familiar? It's worth mentioning that the loyalists also weren't a fan of certain British policies but still were against people protesting against them I guess? I suppose this echoes how conservatives say they're against things like racism but then don't like when people actually protest against racism. It's worth mentioning that there were black loyalists, but this group of loyalists was likely loyal to the British because the British promised to liberate them from their American masters, not because they thought the revolution was wrong or would lead to mob rule or whatever.