Well, fortunately we can always count on leftists to advocate holding the federal government to its few enumerated powers.
Like forcing people to buy health insurance.
The rightists use whatever level of government force is best suited to harm people or prohibit actions that impact only oneself. While the leftists do sometimes overreach, they generally seek to use Federal power to protect people from harm by others, which includes abusing one's fair share of "the commons". Forced health insurance is an example of the latter. Leftists recognize the fact that people without ability to pay their own health care costs lead to one of two possibilities: Either they are left to bleed out and die in the streets, or their costs must be paid for by common funds. Unlike conservatives, liberals have enough basic human empathy that rules out option 1. But option 2 amounts to the uninsured harming others by using more than their fair share of the commons. The two solutions to this are either public health care where everyone's bills are paid by the common fund or requiring each person to have proof they can cover their neccessary expenses (aka, health insurance) and supplying that insurance only to those who cannot afford it.
Contrast this well intentioned use of the Fed with conservative malicious use of federal force to cause harm to people by prohibiting them from getting the most scientifically sound medical treatments, such as abortions, often motivated by trying to profit from this harm, such as by prohibiting pot use to profit makers of far more dangerous and less effective drugs.
People like being the heroes of our own narratives; pretending to ourselves that our opponents are demons and it's heroic to fight them is a temptation few of us can resist. Every ideology views itself through the filter of a self-congratulatory myth; that was progressivism's. If there were a conservative here he could tell us a symmetrical story about conservatives just doing the right thing while liberals are acting like subhuman scum. People of all ideologies usually have a part of their brains that knows perfectly well the bed-time stories they tell themselves about their enemies and about themselves aren't really true; that's what compartmentalization is for. Trying to see the world as it really is takes self-discipline; the emotional payoff for it is meager; and the consequences for in-group acceptance are potentially catastrophic. For very good evolutionary reasons, people would rather be approved of by their associates than right.
"Leftists recognize the fact that people without ability to pay their own health care costs lead to one of two possibilities: Either they are left to bleed out and die in the streets, or their costs must be paid for by common funds."
No. There are three other well-known and frequently adopted solutions. There are the traditional two solutions: they turn to friends and family for help, or else they get a whopping big medical bill and it takes them a while to pay it off and sometimes they go bankrupt. And there's the modern solution: the majority orders some outvoted minority to cover the costs at its own expense.
" Unlike conservatives, liberals have enough basic human empathy that rules out option 1."
No. Leftists knowingly and deliberately leave people to bleed out and die in the streets every day, and they self-deceive in order to not notice. (Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying this about you personally; I don't know you. It is of course possible that you're among the one in a million leftists who don't do it. But I wouldn't bet a nickel on that chance. (Also, don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying conservatives don't do it too.))
"But option 2 amounts to the uninsured harming others by using more than their fair share of the commons."
No. You might as well claim, like the Soviets did, that since refuseniks were educated at state expense and emigration deprives the collective of a return on its investment, it's fair for the government to hold its people prisoner to keep them from "harming others" by climbing over the wall and sticking others with the bill. The Soviets deliberately ignored the fact that the refuseniks weren't given a choice about participation in state schooling and the fact that the state had systematically dismantled all competing sources of education. When a guy won't buy insurance because it's unreasonably expensive because the government jacked up the price of health care to ten times the market rate, and then he gets sick and asks for help and the government gives it to him even though he wouldn't buy insurance, that's not him harming others by using more than his fair share of the commons. That's the government harming everyone by overloading the commons.
So first permit us to buy cheap drugs from Canada, permit us to get our Pakistani doctors out of their taxicabs and into our hospitals, and permit us to open new hospitals without a "Certificate of Need"; then tell us why we have a duty to buy insurance if we can.
The two solutions to this are either public health care where everyone's bills are paid by the common fund or requiring each person to have proof they can cover their neccessary expenses (aka, health insurance) and supplying that insurance only to those who cannot afford it.
Contrast this well intentioned use of the Fed..."
That's not a well-intentioned use of the Fed. That's hunter-gatherers imposing hunter-gatherer morality on farmers. It's "well-intentioned" only if hunter-gatherer morality is correct and farmer morality is evil. Which of course is what hunter-gatherers customarily assume. Hunter-gatherers don't grok how farming works, they don't grok why it works, and they don't grok how farmer morality contributes to it working. So they just take for granted that any aspect of farmer society that doesn't follow the dictates of hunter-gatherer morality ought to be deleted from farmer societies.
In particular, they apply zero-sum-game economic reasoning, they imagine that a person with more possessions than he can carry to the next campsite is using more than his fair share of the commons, they infer that his extra stuff belongs in the common fund, and they conclude that since it's well-intentioned for the community to all take turns helping the injured guy limp to the new campsite, it must also be well-intentioned for the community to pick a guy who's unpopular because he used too much of "the commons" and make him be the guy's crutch.
So first enact a nondiscriminatory tax system; then tell us why making charity compulsory is well-intentioned.
"...with conservative malicious use of federal force to cause harm to people by prohibiting them from getting the most scientifically sound medical treatments, such as abortions, often motivated by trying to profit from this harm, such as by prohibiting pot use to profit makers of far more dangerous and less effective drugs."
No. They aren't stopping abortions maliciously, but because they believe fetuses are people and because they believe reproduction is holy. They aren't prohibiting pot because they want people to take fentanyl so Johnson & Johnson will be richer, but because drugs are bad, m'kay? They're sincerely judging right and wrong and doing what what they think is right, just like you; they're judging what's right and wrong by relying on unsupported premises, just like you; and they're believing their ideology's self-congratulatory just-so-stories about how its adherents are good and its opponents are evil, just like you.
