Amalgamation

[danbrotherston]

Not a great reference. It was Ronald Reagan, I believe, who used it as part of the right-wing project to undermine trust in the whole concept of working together (i.e., in a democratic society, government, for projects on a certain scale).

But yeah, I don’t really want any new help from Doug Ford and his cronies…

Ummm, no. Reagan's quote is: "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I want to help."

Coulnd't have said it better myself - the less government interference in our lives the better

Great, so you don't get to use the public roads, you don't get healthcare--even private healthcare which is largely the product of government research grants, you don't even get to interact with anyone else in the society because we are all educated as a result of broad public education.

You can go live alone in the woods...except you cannot even do that without depending on society.

Reaganism is a denial of the reality that we are social creatures living in a communally...in a society. You cannot live without depending on other people, this is an inherent to human existence.

You can argue about the scale or distribution of power within a society but you cannot argue against it's existence, which is exactly what Reagan style conservatives pretend to do. The funny thing is, you'll probably pipe up with "well private whatever whatever"...and now you *are* arguing about power distribution in society, and you are arguing that YOU should not have power, and instead wealthy people should have the power. Democratic governments are the mechanism by which we distribute power equally to the people independent of wealth, and modern conservativism is a reactionary response against that, and a push away from egalitarianism towards a wealth/hereditary hierarchy.