I keep thinking about the doctors. What must they be thinking? I spent 10 years of education and interning — so I can work for the government? I’ll be part of a vast bureaucracy, forced to follow a shelf full of regulations meant to substitute for my independent judgment.
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann lay out how it happened. Obama bought off special interests. Their piece could serve as an appendix to Henry Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson, a real life example of how money goes to special interests to the detriment of the general good. Their list also reminds me of Bastiat’s aphorism, “The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”
As Judge Napolitano notes, socializing medicine is much worse than just bad economics:
Even the Republicans have introduced their version of Obamacare Lite. It, too, if passed, will compel employers to provide coverage, bribe the states to change their court rules, and tell insurance companies whom to insure.
We do not have two political parties in this country, America. We have one party; called the Big Government Party. The Republican wing likes deficits, war, and assaults on civil liberties. The Democratic wing likes wealth transfer, taxes, and assaults on commercial liberties. Both parties like power; and neither is interested in your freedoms. Think about it. Government is the negation of freedom. Freedom is your power and ability to follow your own free will and your own conscience. The government wants you to follow the will of some faceless bureaucrat.
Please note that even the Republicans are pushing further government intervention into medicine. No matter what happens, we’ll get screwed.
Benpercent asks on Twitter, “if passed, can it not be repealed?” Repealing is rare in the welfare state. Reagan promised to get rid of the Departments of Energy and Education; he failed: they’re still here, bigger than ever.
When repealing happens, it’s called deregulation, a process reviled by the left. To this day leftists blame the S&L crisis on deregulation. Remember, Obama thinks that when left to a free market doctors are corrupted by greed to the point of prescribing unnecessary tonsillectomies and amputations just to defraud patients of their money. The left sees deregulation as a disastrous process that dismantles laws that protect everyone from the pernicious forces of greed.
The Democrats are determined to pass health care. Just this weekend Obama pressed the case, even using the insult “teabag:”
Mr. Obama, during his private pep talk to Democrats, recognized Mr. Owens election and then posed a question to the other lawmakers. According to Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, who supports the health care bill, the president asked, “Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit†Democratic voters “and it will encourage the extremists.â€
It’s not surprising that Obama called on Democrat lawmakers to sacrifice for the health care bill, but it is surprising and disgusting that he would liken their decision to the soldiers who died at Ft. Hood.
“He was absolutely inspiring. In a very moving way, he reminded us what sacrifice really is,†said New Jersey Rep. Rob Andrews, estimating the persuader-in-chief turned several votes.
“Sacrifice is not casting a vote that might lose an election for you; it is the sacrifice that someone makes when they wear the uniform of this country and that unfortunately a number of people made this week,†said Andrews.
We’re getting the whole treatment — special interests being bought off, the opposition demonized and smeared, and a sappy appeal to sacrifice. This is how we lose our freedom in America — not with a bang, but with sleazy backroom deals among mediocrities.
And they said Atlas Shrugged was “unrealistic”. As near as I can tell, our “leaders” are using it as a script.
who do you blame though. The president after all is the result of his culture. So its safe to say its a sacrificial culture and that maybe the people do really stink.
Judge Napolitano wears his Libertarian underwear over his pants:
“Government is the negation of freedom.”
His statement advocates for anarchism.
Freedom in a political context does not mean anarchy, it means freedom from coercive interference initiated by other men. Since there will always be men willing to achieve their goals by using force on others. anarchy is an immediate ticket to the warlord society of Somalia.
Of course, only Objectivism holds that a constitutionally-enshrined government-monopoly on the use of force —& then only as retaliation— is the only means to protect the individual rights & freedoms of a nation’s citizens.
The “all libertarian and quasi-libertarian political philosophies are anarchist” is an unfortunate one that is tarring Objectivism unjustly — Objectivism holding, as Embedded I aptly notes, that a properly limited government is absolutely necessary.
Unfortunately, it takes some explaining and development to communicate this, and any time you have a complex idea like that, it can be overwhelmed by memes. One of the most popular that I’ve seen around the net sets up a strawman of a “typical conservative voter,” asks that voter if he wants limited government and a pure free-market society, and then points to a “perfect” example of those concepts in practice… in anarchist Somalia. Complete with a street scene of “exotic other” people toting guns and smiling with malice.
As Morbo would say, however, “Liberty does not work that way!” See, we can use memes too. True, the libertarians pay lip service to anarchy, mostly because they take what should be developed principles and deem them axiomatic, such as the non-initiation principle. Objectivists, meanwhile, know that anarchy is fruitless, and is really just trading one big despot for a million little despots. In neither case are individual rights protected.