Last night was the third Republican presidential primary debate, and the 10 candidates spent the majority of the time demonizing the federal government and social services.
Medicare is near the top of services that the Republican candidates want to cut or privatize, with candidates like Ted Cruz also taking aim at doing away with Obamacare completely.
The conservative ideology is clear, their logic is simply that anything that can be done for the public good must also represent an opportunity for capitalists to make a buck .
But strangely enough, those very same conservatives drive on public roads, rely on public police departments, and would call the public fire department if their house ever caught fire.
Not all of those services have always been publicly provided though, in fact, fire departments were privately run in America up until around the time of the Civil War.
Before that time, private citizens paid fire companies for fire insurance, and then hung a medallion for that fire company on the front of their building.
If and when a fire broke out, the different fire brigades would all race to put the fire out, if the building had the medallion of a fire insurance company.
And if it didn't, then the blaze would simply be allowed to burn until it threatened a building that did have a medallion on display.
But around the time of the Civil War, big cities like New York started abolishing their for-profit fire departments and created their own city and state run fire departments.
Which just makes sense, because a fire doesn't just threaten the individual property owner.
Just look at the Great Chicago Fire in 1871 for a prime example of how a fire on a single property can threaten an entire city.
And even though the super-rich in this country are known to hire their own security teams, just think about how dysfunctional our country would be if we privatized all of our police forces.
If someone were to get robbed or if your identity were stolen, you could hire the police to investigate, if you still have money to pay.
Or, if someone was kidnapped, their family could choose between paying the ransom or paying the cops to try to bring them back home safe and sound.
Unlike fire departments, police forces have always been public in this country, because keeping the public safe and making sure that citizens obey the laws of the land is a necessary public good.
And the whole point of government is to provide necessary public services that promote the "general welfare," as they refer to it repeatedly in the Constitution.
So if we care so much about our buildings, why don't we protect our bodies the same way.
