{"id":11203,"date":"2013-09-24T02:47:18","date_gmt":"2013-09-24T09:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=11203"},"modified":"2013-09-24T02:47:18","modified_gmt":"2013-09-24T09:47:18","slug":"a-republican-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/09\/24\/a-republican-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"A Republican Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

At different times, different people have had different ideas of freedom.  The Pilgrims objected to having the dogma of the Church of England imposed on them.  They came to the new world for the freedom to impose their own dogma on others.  Even at the founding of our nation freedom meant totally different things to the plantation owner and the slave.  Roosevelt defined four freedoms: of speech, of worship, from want and from fear.  Today’s Republicans offer some strange freedoms: for blacks and others, freedom from voting; for the poor and sick, freedom from life; and for women, freedom from self-determination and reproductive rights.  They also offer a Republican freedom for the hungry, as Paul Krugman elucidates.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"25SNAP\"The word \u201cfreedom\u201d looms large in modern conservative rhetoric. Lobbying groups are given names like FreedomWorks [Koch suckers delinked<\/em>]; health reform is denounced not just for its cost but as an assault on, yes, freedom. Oh, and remember when we were supposed to refer to pommes frites as \u201cfreedom fries\u201d?<\/p>\n

The right\u2019s definition of freedom, however, isn\u2019t one that, say, F.D.R. would recognize. In particular, the third of his famous Four Freedoms<\/a> \u2014 freedom from want \u2014 seems to have been turned on its head. Conservatives seem, in particular, to believe that freedom\u2019s just another word for not enough to eat<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

Hence the war on food stamps, which House Republicans have just voted to cut sharply<\/a> even while voting to increase farm subsidies<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In a way, you can see why the food stamp program \u2014 or, to use its proper name, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) \u2014 has become a target. Conservatives are deeply committed to the view that the size of government has exploded under President Obama but face the awkward fact that public employment<\/a> is down sharply, while overall spending has been falling fast as a share of G.D.P.<\/a> SNAP, however, really has grown a lot, with enrollment rising from 26 million Americans in 2007<\/a> to almost 48 million<\/a> now. <\/p>\n

Conservatives look at this and see what, to their great disappointment, they can\u2019t find elsewhere in the data: runaway, explosive growth in a government program. The rest of us, however, see a safety-net program doing exactly what it\u2019s supposed to do: help more people in a time of widespread economic distress\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

Photo credit: Pinterest<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n

Krugman goes on to explain how the increase in SNAP utilization is not because of runaway spending, as Republican\u2019s claim, but because of runaway need, due to the Republican Recession.  He provides a detailed explanation of the program and how it benefits all Americans, not just recipients.  I urge you to click through and read the rest.  Finally I agree with him that the reason Republicans have done this is only because they are mean-spirited class-warriors.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At different times, different people have had different ideas of freedom.  The Pilgrims objected to having the dogma of the Church of England imposed on them.  They came to the new world for the freedom to impose their own dogma on others.  Even at the founding of our nation freedom meant totally different things to […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}