I notice on social media that various conservatives are becoming increasingly irate at being reminded of the fact that things like roads, police, fire protection, are essentially socialist programs which they are not only happy to use without thought, but view as their well-deserved entitlements. Jim Wright, over at Stonekettle Station, set off something of a firestorm on Twitter for pointing out that, “Calling universal healthcare and public education free stuff is the same as calling a Navy aircraft carrier a free ship.” The conservative outrage, apparently, stems from the “fact” that things like roads, police, and fire departments, are the sorts of things that government is “supposed” to provide. What the self-righteous conservative objects to is all of that other stuff, like public education and healthcare, that socialists propose to just “give away.”

It is very hard to give a measured response to such immeasurable ignorance and hypocrisy. It really is not all that long ago that fire, police, and roads were the sorts of things that governments did NOT bother to provide. Part of the devastation of the Great Fire of London in 1666 was that there was no uniform, government provided and enforced system of fire protection and suppression. The introduction of the “King’s Highway” (“high,” because the road was built up above the surrounding ground, so that when it rained the road would not turn into an impassable quagmire) was something of a revolutionary approach to transportation. The idea of an actual police force didn’t really come into being in the European world until the 19^th Century. In earlier times such tasks were handled by local thugs and warlords whose only claim to “law” was that there was no one around who might challenge their arbitrary decisions and actions. So why are these things suddenly just and only the sorts of things that government is supposed to provide? Specifically, if fire and police protection, roads, water and sewage, are the sort of things government is supposed to provide, then why are things like healthcare, education, minimal standards of living, access to basic resources such as information and community, examples of things that those nasty-evil socialists want to just “give away”? Continue reading →