... which might as well have been a video of me!
Well, the right doesn't get it because they can only argue extremes. Here's a sensible way to think about it: there's something between the pole of individualism and the pole of collectivism. It has a name. It is called the temperate zone. It is where life thrives.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-conservative-response-to-elizabeth-warren/2011/10/06/gIQAjLIoQL_blog.html
"It’s important to understand that behind all this clever and fancy wording is an argument that has nothing whatsoever to do with what Warren actually said. Will translates Warren’s claim into an assertion that the “collectivity” is entitled to “conscript” or “take as much as it pleases, rendering an individual’s property, achievements and even his or her autonomy meaningless or inoperative simply because they were enabled by that society.
This power to “conscript” that Will refers to is a reference to “taxation.” Congress’s power to tax flows from the U.S. Constitution, and the members of Congress who determine tax rates are elected by the millions of people who vote in Congressional elections. I’m assuming Will doesn’t question that basic arrangement. Warren was not calling for a change in that basic arrangement; she was merely making an argument about what constitutes a fairer rate of taxation under a system that Will presumably accepts as legitimate.
What Warren actually said celebrated individual achievement, property and autonomy, while making the completely uncontroversial argument that those things are made possible by a functioning society enabled by a healthy social contract. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive in any way. The argument Warren is making is over how much each of us should sacrifice in order to keep that functioning society healthy. We’re running a deficit; someone has to pay to close it. Warren is simply asking the wealthy to sacrifice a bit more in that direction, because if they don’t, a disporprotionately heavy burden for fixing it will fall on the rest of us. This is a fair request, Warren says, because the society they’d be helping to keep afloat partly enabled their wealth in the first place — and will enable others to follow in their footsteps. Warren is making thise case to individuals who will decide whether to elect her to the Senate to advance this view. No tyrannical “collectivity” here."
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