You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?

Note: This was a shitty movie.

So, if Memeorandum is any indication, a few conservative bloggers have taken to mining fourth-rate dialogue from third-rate science fiction movies in order to make an absurd point about how a modest package of insurance reforms amounts to an attack on liberty itself.

I asked something along these lines on Facebook yesterday and in light of the apoplectic conservative reaction to Saturday’s vote, it’s worth posing these questions to the linked bloggers (if they are paying attention, of course). In what way does the health care bill constitute “socialism” or an attack on our “liberty”? How does the contents of the bill limit your freedom of action or restrict your ability to pursue your own comprehensive conception of the good? And, assuming you’re not similarly opposed to Medicare and Social Security, how is the health care bill categorically different from either of those programs? Finally, I also think it’s worth asking if you have a solution. If agree that there are serious systemic problems with our health care system, then are there any reforms you think would address – or at least mitigate – the problems of overconsumption, high cost, and inadequate coverage?

If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that neither blogger has a real answer to any of those questions. For all of their bleating about how Saturday’s vote dealt a Mortal Kombat-esque fatal blow to “liberty,” I doubt either blogger even has a reasonably well-thought idea of what liberty is. Indeed, I think it’s entirely fair to say that “liberty” for these folks is anything they really like and tyranny, by contrast, is anything that makes them feel sad and/or knocks them off of their (poorly) self-constructed pedestal.

Also, what John Cole said.