Ben Adler at Tapped has two posts (here and here ) in which he reveals that he works from the assumption that Republicans “in all seriousness, have it in” for people with disabilities. You can judge the merits of his argument on your own. What I find interesting is the worldview here. Adler assumes that Republicans operate as actual villains who want to do bad things to disabled people — that sticking it to the diabled is an actual animating passion on the right. Just for the record, I’ve now been party to, let’s say, hundreds of thousands of intra-conservative conversations large and small, public and private, written and spoken. Not once have I ever heard such a mustache-twirling desire put forward. (Julian Sanchez has more thoughts on this point.)

But perhaps Adler was just writing in shorthand, ascribing the effects of conservative policies to conservative motives carelessly. Fine, fine.

But then there’s the sticky issue of how he defines “having it in” for the disabled. He works from the assumption that the disabled are entitled to everything and anything the state can conceivably provide, and then he assumes that any opposition to such generosity is a sign of evil intent, a sort of larceny by conservatism. In short, in Adler’s view, the disabled are already entitled to everything and the conservative who disagrees wants to take away what is already theirs. This is a fascinating snippet of the assumptions behind Progressive thought. For it holds that positive rights exist prior to everything else and that conservatives are champions of subtraction from an already existing edifice.

The conservative (and most libertarians) sees things very differently. While there may be a moral obligation for the State to help the disabled have fruitful lives — where and when it can at reasonable cost — the disabled (and other entitlement seekers) do not have have an established a priori right to special cars or jobs not well-suited to the blind, people in wheelchairs etc. But according to the Progressive mind, denying this metaphysical right to cosmic justice is proof positive of “having it in” for the diabled.