Despite that, or because of it, we have long, extended conversations, comparing and contrasting experiences, arguing fairly intently on a range of political subjects, and occasionally even finding common ground - for instance, we both agree on the recent ouster of the President of Honduras:
(Massive tangent here) Despite being popularly elected originally, we both think that he has both extensively violated their constitution, and was the one to originate the violations - with his opposition doing only a minimum of violence to the rule of law, necessary to actually protect the rule of law. After all, when your opponent is expressly ignoring the laws, and the rulings of your Supreme court, and is arming and recruiting mobs threatening violence, to wait for the next congressional meeting to pass a motion of impeachment (which he can equally ignore), is to invite your opponent to complete the violent overthrow of the constitution and claim perpetual power under the guise of 'popular action' a la Venezuela.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Chavez stole his initial election there (the subsequent ones, yes, the first one was honest) - but he has comprehensively ignored the laws and the constitution at his own whim, and even if he has retained popular support (a debatable proposition), to destroy the rule of law is to destroy all legitimacy: without it, all you have is the whim of the tyrant, whether his power arises from the army, the divine right of kings, or 'popular majority'.
But, to get back to my original point at last! We were wrangling over the Health Care reforms being proposed, and I was flabbergasted when he said his opposition is based, not on anything in the bills being submitted, but because they contain the seed of something that may be carried much further as a precedent, which he would oppose, such as the supposed 'death panels' that are causing such hysteria here.
God spare me!
On that basis you should oppose any and all laws - I can certainly find in the roots of any bill that is passed, something that could be egregiously exagerrated into a total abuse of power. How can you even argue with someone who won't argue the law being offered, only possible extensions of it and hypothetical actions of future politicians? The time to argue against the things you actually resist is when they are proposed, not at some earlier irrelevant juncture, surely.
I've listened to these slippery slope arguments for 40 years now** - ever since Vietnam - and they have never borne fruit, not once. I'm just utterly exasperated at this point. Worse than that, Mark and his family would be amongst the beneficiaries of these reforms (whereas I doubt if it will benefit me, short of losing my job), yet he has this apparently totally irrational opposition to these very moderate and mild reforms, because 'they could lead us to having a Canadian style health system'.
I won't even bother with the argument that the Canadian system actually delivers much better average outcomes than the US one does, at 2/3 the price - it doesn't matter, the Canadian system has been so systematically vilified as terrible, with horrible rationing of care, that no argument based on facts could actually penetrate. Of course the US system also has horrible rationing - done by insurance company functionaries operating out of a profit-first motive, so even more callous than any government bureaucrat - but that also doesn't matter, apparently.
The fact is, the current proposals dont resemble in any fashion the Canadian system, and noone is suggesting that it should, or that it would be a good idea: and what truly seems to horrify people here about the Canadian system is that they forbid you to go outside the government system if you're rich enough to pay for private health care.
Of course, the Canadians can afford to do this because they know anyone rich enough to seek private health care (and thus skip over the dreaded queueing), will simply drive across the border and get it in the USA, where, after all, the best health care in the world is available, if you're rich enough. Besides which, if any politician ever made such an egregiously egalitarian proposal here in the Land of the Free, they would be immediately and permanently jerked out of office, and laughed to scorn, with popularity ratings as low as the despicable Cheney.
Anyway, with even the reasonable wing of the opposition being apparently totally unreasonable (and I would talk about how chickenhearted the uncrazy Republican politicians are about this subject, but I appear to have exhausted my store of invective for the moment): all we can do is hope the Democrats find some backbone and cohesion, and ram this through. There is no possibility of getting bipartisan agreement on the bill(s), and the opposition have made that painfully clear: but, the Democrats actually do not need this, and can & should ram it through on their own, as soon as possible. Once it's done, the storms of opposition will move on to some other subject, and health care will be forgotten, and eventually (like Medicare and Social Security) be seen as part of the American heritage, and a great thing. Eventually.
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Update: and apparently it was going on a long time before I started listening (from Political Animal):
Though no one was talking about "death panels" back then, opponents claimed that Social Security would result in massive government control. A Republican congressman from New York, for example, charged: "The lash of the dictator will be felt, and 25 million free American citizens will for the first time submit themselves to a fingerprint test."
Another New York congressman put it this way: "The bill opens the door and invites the entrance into the political field of a power so vast, so powerful as to threaten the integrity of our institutions and to pull the pillars of the temple down upon the heads of our descendants." A Republican senator from Delaware claimed that Social Security would "end the progress of a great country and bring its people to the level of the average European."
Today, opponents of a public health insurance option claim that it would drive private health insurance out of business and put a bureaucrat between doctors and patients. Back then, opponents of Social Security warned that it would "establish a bureaucracy in the field of insurance in competition with private business" that would "destroy" private pensions.
Then as now, opponents played the socialism card.
It wasn't just Social Security. When FDR tackled health care reform, the right condemned "the socialization of medicine," and the AMA said Roosevelt's plans were "un-American."
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