Fox News Southerners

I had my first run-in with a southern conservative.

On my flight from Philadelphia to Montgomery, the person next to me saw me reading a Newsweek article on health care reform, and he said, "I hope you agree that the health care bill shouldn't pass." I of course replied that I was hoping it would pass. He then responded: "I don't want to give someone a handout." So I asked him, if someone walks into a hospital bleeding to death and they don't have health insurance, should they be refused treatment." He said, "they do treat everyone." Me: "I'm asking you if the person should be treated if they cannot afford to pay for the treatment." He said yes, and I pointed out that he did in fact agreed that all people should be entitled to a basic level of medical care regardless if they can pay for it." From there he started going through everything Fox News hates about Democrats.

1. Socialism. I pointed out to him that the rest of the Western world has some form of universal health care -- are they all wrong? He said yes. We have the best healthcare in the world. My response: then why is it that the US ranks about 50th in life expectancy? He then rambled on about how we're not socialists in America, we're not **gasp** Canada!

2. Death Panels. He then started saying that having the government make decisions about your health, about when you die, was extremely dangerous, and that's not the government's job. So I said, "you prefer having a health insurance company, that only cares about profit margins, being the one making these types of decisions?"

3. Debt. He complained about the national debt, and went on this tirade about how we should never borrow money, and that in his personal life he never borrows money and only buys what he has cash on-hand to purchase. I asked him if he had a mortgage and he did.

4. Stimulus. He thought too much money was being spent on infrastructure and that there was no public good in paving roads, that people could get by with cracks in the street. I didn't bother to respond to this.

He finally went on about how America was founded by Christians who believed in limited government, that the Constitution says nothing about health insurance, the country should be run based on what the Constitution says, and that the Constitution is a Christian document. I don't know how the religion thing came in, and I thought it was a bit ironic. I didn't know Jesus, but from what I've heard, I think he'd be in favor of universal health care. I pointed out that many of the founders were deist who were heavily influenced by the Enlightenment. He thought his trump card was that "liberty" comes from the bible. I pointed out that the context it was used in, in the Declaration of Independence came from John Locke and the Enlightenment. Thankfully at this point the airplane landed and I was able to make an exit.