A while back (back in August), Bill Maher had Aston Kutcher as a panelist on Real Time. Why? I don’t know. Maybe to get the young libertarian point of view or something. Kutcher isn’t the dumbest person on the face of the earth (not even close, with people like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Oily Taintz all in line ahead of him) but he definitely falls under the “twit” category. Among the topics that night was (of course) health care, with poor little Ashton questioning why he should have to pay for health care for those who eat twinkies, don’t exercise, or don’t measure up to Kutcher’s standards of what constitutes an acceptable lifestyle. Bill, of course, was more or less on board with that idea too.

Why, Ashton? Well, because that’s the way it works. It’s nice that you’re perfect and you eat well and take immaculate care of yourself (it helps if that’s more or less what your job in life is, not to mention the fact that you’re still young), but you don’t get to decide who should get care and who shouldn’t. It’s all well and good (and cost effective) to promote “health care” over symptom treatment, but that doesn’t people who aren’t on board should get turned into Soylent Green. Would you propose we tell somebody, “sorry, you smoked for twenty years, so screw you and your lung cancer, too”? Sorry you had a heart attack, fatso, but you shoulda thought of that before you ate all that red meat and potatoes. Where does that end? Hey, I can’t be paying into a fund that’s gonna treat somebody with genetic disposition to ovarian cancer or sickle cell anemia. It’s not my fault. Hey, sorry you got hit by a bus, but you really shoulda looked both ways. Just we glad we aren’t charging you to clean up the mess.

In fact let’s take it a step farther (or is it further). Do you realize there are highways that I pay for that I’ll never drive on? I’ve never had my house burn down or needed a cop, so why should my taxes go to fund the police and fire departments? I don’t have kids and haven’t been in high school for over 30 years, so why the hell should my tax dollars go to subsidize somebody else’s kids?

Why, Ashton? Well, there are two reasons. The first that society as a whole (and we, as individual members) benefits when there are roads, schools, public safety, and when everybody has access to health care. Sure, there are times when some of us put more into the system than we get back out of it to cover the slackers (like Texas), but we’re all better off when we take care of everyone. And, hey, you never know, Mr. Fk’in Wonderful – you just might need a little help some day, too, when you’re a washed-up has-been trying to make yourself relevant by denying evolution or something.

But the other – and most important – reason, is that taking care of everyone (even those who, in your eyes, don’t “deserve” it) is the right thing to do. And it really is just as simple as that.

Why so many bible-thumping, Jesus-praising “conservatives” don’t seem to understand that is beyond me. Hell, even we heathens get it.