Abe

I once read an Abraham Lincoln quote to the effect of, "Whenever I hear of a man extolling the many virtues of slavery, I feel an urge to have the institution tried out on him." Or something. I spent about 90 seconds googling the exact quote then realized I had homework to do.

But though slavery is at least officially abolished in these United States, I sadly still find this quote still applicable today.

For example, I'll occasionally meet someone who not only excuses but defends the use of sweat-shop child labor in third world countries, extolling the virtues of putting children to work, of not spoiling them as we do in America, and the unique opportunity presented their suffering country to work their way out of poverty (at 14 cents a day). Whenever I hear such a person, I feel an urge to have that persons own children, or even themselves, put to work in a sweat shop, no school, no windows, no escape from starvation.

In the midst of the Iraq War, and I heard someone extolling the virtues of that war, I wondered why they themselves were not enlisting in the military--especially given the low recruitment numbers. I always wanted to say: "Dude, there are no restrictions on class, race, education or gender on military enlistment. If this war means so much to you, and if you really want to support our troops, why not do so in person?" I'm looking at you, Lee Greenwood.

And don't get me started on those in favor of torture and suspending due process.

And of course, most recently, a common argument against health care reform was that health care is free anyways, since if you check yourself in, the hospital has to operate on you. To which I've always wanted to say: "oh, is that why you don't have any health insurance? If no health insurance isn't such a big deal, why not go without it yourself? Save yourself a few bucks each month?" This especially goes for military personal and congressman, who all receive govt.-run, tax-payer funded health insurance. If you hate it so much, when are you getting rid of yours?