There is a good reason why the government should not supply health care – it’s called the Constitution. The Constitution nowhere allows for such a thing.

the constitution doesn’t disallow it, either. just because it’s not specifically enumerated there doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. remember the phrase “promote the general welfare”?

Basically, the government has no right to take it upon itself to provide those things for us that we are capable of providing for ourselves.

maybe you are able to provide for yourself, but it’s crystal clear that many, many others aren’t able to. otherwise it wouldn’t have been such a big issue for so long, would it?

And if our health care is an embarrassment and a joke why dont I see droves of people moving to Cuba, England or Thailand for their health care?

thailand has a huge “medical tourism” industry. so does cuba. high-quality care at affordable prices. people from all over the world (including LOTS of americans) come here for all kinds of treatments.

england obviously isn’t cheap enough to have that kind of industry, but quality-wise i have heard no complaints from friends (both native english and americans who have had babies there, had family members hospitalized, etc.) who live and work there.

japan has a good system and a pretty equitable way of paying for it. the care there is good and they have the world’s highest life expectancy as a nation even though they all smoke like chimneys and work too hard. go figure.

if we’d ride the tort lawyers out of town tarred and feathered and on a rail it would get a whole lot less expensive.
abcurtis on April 10, 2008 at 10:23 AM

and the AMA, and the pharmaceutical monopolies, etc., etc…

the real problem in the states with health care is that it isn’t a free market. nor is it socialized. it has to be one or the other.

if it were truly socialized, everyone would be covered.

if it were truly a free market, there would (in theory, at least) be affordable options for everyone. right?

right now all the system does is make rich people (doctors, pharmaceuticals) richer while screwing everybody else.

Congratulations. You have achieved caricature status.

DrSteve on April 10, 2008 at 8:50 AM

hey, thanks doc, for that extremely substantive response to my comment. how can i argue with such a brilliantly constructed ad hominem? you win.

btw, are you really a doctor? if so, that would explain a lot…

How about just plain ol’ socialists/communists? that’s pretty much how I’ve seen liberals, in particular liberal democrats my whole entire life. Socialism the government controls property and production. Communism the government OWNS property and means of production. Democrats are at best socialists at worst communists. That’s my opinion.

The “socialist/communist” left likes to refer to everyone they disagree with as fascists, as if there’s much of a difference between each form of authoritarian collectivism. I’ve argued with leftists who insist that fascism is just corporate control of the government. When I insist that the definition is actually quite soft and that socialism is just as pernicious as fascism and quite similar, they won’t hear of it. So I avoid arguing the terms and just describe what I see.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ….. YOU ARE ALL RACISTS …

GIVE ME MONEY NOW !!! I have summer camp payments to make …

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[Statist] “Obamas and the Clintons want to convince voters that the solution is even more government”, Ed wrote.

Hence, PC EMPOWERMENT takes away a right from the one who has the ability, and redistributes to someone else (whether that someone has ability or not, and whether that someone uses what the origin has been deprived of), not “sharing” but “redistributing” or absconding.

Hillary and Obama by nature are overt statists, each having converted their politics into their god of action. Bush qualifies as well with his economic banking investment regulations (requiring banks to loan to people with no means OR REQUIREMENT to pay responsibly month by month), and tax dollar federal theft empowering crooked institutions to benefit further, all the while crying “all is well” that way.

Romney’s economic development platform was overtly statist in the “best” sense that a century ago brought the USA into Wilson’s and FDR’s progressive fascistic pockets, Wilson literally trampling the Constitution, both imprisoning those who remained responsibly independent instead of succumbing to the progressive movement that has never stopped, though sometimes the current is strongest on top and sometimes below the surface. At least Romney defined secure borders, rule of law, citizen rights’ priority over illegal aliens criminal activity, remaining nationalist in the benevolent sense of taking care of our own business, not imperialistic.

McCain is a “global statist” in that he will not protect, preserve or secure our national borders; nor will McCain protect citizen’s rights and responsibilities, prefering the dissolution of our civilization and social fabric in order to rule the military business machine as Commander in Chief while POTUS, as CEO in “retirement”.

As a Constitutional Conservative, Fred Thompson gave us the opportunity to support a GOP candidate who was NOT a statist by any sense of the word. On Fox News Sunday, Bill Krystol gave Thompson parting advice to take his “cultural” government lessons to the entertainment industry, not to attempt serving in public office where the message was unwelcome. Then Michael Savage derided Thompson following his departure, saying that Thompson’s public service had only been for publicity towards his private interests. And of course, Allahpundit did his best to deride the age of Thompson as a disqualification for POTUS, politics aside, McCain’s age aside.

America has its chance to think ernestly but instead persists to choose facade.

There is no sense in “supporting” McCain until after he PROVES to accomplish the conservative citizen’s rights. To grant McCain ANY support right now, prior to his commitment to conservative rights, is to empower progressive statism.

I don’t think he’s racist, but I do think he looks down on the vast majority of Americans. His condescension emerges occasionally and it flows like a river from wifey.

I never favored the terms Marxist or even fascist, but for the sake of convenience, use them. I prefer the all-encompassing term, “Authoritarian Collectivists.”

How about just plain ol’ socialists/communists? that’s pretty much how I’ve seen liberals, in particular liberal democrats my whole entire life. Socialism the government controls property and production. Communism the government OWNS property and means of production. Democrats are at best socialists at worst communists. That’s my opinion.

america’s health care system is a joke and an embarrassment. there is no good reason why the U.S. can’t provide health care to all citizens. every other industrialized & rich nation (and lots of poor ones, like thailand) do it. why can’t we?

There is a good reason why the government should not supply health care – it’s called the Constitution. The Constitution nowhere allows for such a thing. If you want government run health care, talk to your reps and get a Constitutional amendment movement started. That’s the only way the government can legally supply health care or any other social service. Basically, the government has no right to take it upon itself to provide those things for us that we are capable of providing for ourselves. And if our health care is an embarrassment and a joke why dont I see droves of people moving to Cuba, England or Thailand for their health care?
Our health care isnt perfect but it’s a sight better than what’s in second place. And if we’d ride the tort lawyers out of town tarred and feathered and on a rail it would get a whole lot less expensive.

God bless Michelle Obama. Give that woman her own T.V channel and cut her loose 24 hours a day.

Now that’s a thought. She could compete with the Church of Oprah. Either way the people get fleeced.
But it’s like an earlier poster said – She’s giving McCain all the ammunition he needs, but I doubt he’ll use it. We’ve really gotten ourselves into a mess havent we?

homesickamerican on April 9, 2008 at 11:42 PM

Congratulations. You have achieved caricature status.

Bill Ramey on April 10, 2008 at 1:11 AM

Bill, of course that’s correct as far as it goes, and smartly presented at that, but I’m not sure about the “more of a threat to freedom” bit of your argument — except when it comes to the sheer difference in probabilities of meeting in the wild an actual Marxist versus a mere “compassion fascist.” The “naive” nature of Marxist expectations that the state will wither away are potentially as lethal as anything the more assertive collectivists have ginned up in the last 100 years. Those expectations will, in reality, always be frustrated because of the nature of human knowledge — and because incentives will always matter. And when those expectations are frustrated, the bodies will begin to pile up.

Marx ultimately copped out on the specifics — no “recipes for the cookshops of the future,” and all that. Much mischief occupies the space that left. He was also dead wrong on the transformation problem and the labor theory of value. A system with those kinds of flaws at its heart is not any less dangerous than milder-looking variants.

I take your point that MO doesn’t appear to be anything but a vulgar redistributionist, however.

“The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.”

Sounds to me like the libs are setting the stage, getting everyone in the right frame of mind before the big bendover.
I haven’t had time to read all the comments yet, but I agree with the fact she and her husband scare the pants off me.

I wanted to give the guy a chance, but every one he’s surrounded himself with seems to be either a communist, a “hate whitey” lunatic, or both.

I wanted to like Obama, but he’s so far left he goes off the charts. And I wonder about his real feelings. In my secret soul, I can’t help but think he is a racist.

We’re paying more and getting less. Obviously, the statist model doesn’t work very well

Ed, please, don’t bother these people with the facts. Since when has failure ever deterred a liberal.

I think we have finally crossed that threshold in this country where we now have more takers, than givers.

1. Once humans begin trading goods, division of labor increases and continues to increase, culminating in a capitalist economic system.

2. Capitalism is an improvement over feudalism, but it is riddled with internal contradictions.

3. Eventually the bourgeois capitalist class grows smaller and smaller and the proletarian class grows larger and larger.

4. The proletarian class is not just made up of the working poor or the poor in general; it is also made up of the middle class, ex-capitalists, intellectuals, and former members of the bourgeois class.

5. The proletariat is the “universal negating” class, i.e., it is the class that represents everyone’s interests and thus negates all other classes, which only seek to further their own interests.

6. Capitalism will collapse when nearly everyone is a member of the proletariat class and nearly everyone lives below a subsistence level.

7. The proletariat will overthrow what remains of the capitalist class and establish a dictatorship.

8. The interim period of this dictatorship will be quasi-capitalist, and there will still be division of labor.

9. Eventually, however, we will work in accordance with the dictum “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

10. The State will wither away and division of labor will cease. Each of us will be a Jack-of-all-trades, doing what we please when we please.

Hence there are important differences between Marxism and today’s liberal-left. First, Marx is an historical determinist. He thinks that the above is a description of how history will unfold, not how it ought to unfold. That is why he thought of socialism as a scientific theory. By contrast, most liberal-leftists are normative socialists, i.e., they believe that we’re obligated to provide universal health care and education, among other things, in order to secure a just society. This is much more John Rawls than Karl Marx.

Second, as we can see in point 10, Marx is something of a (naive) anarcho-utopian. He thinks that the State will wither way, and there are passages in his writings where he criticizes both bureaucracy and taxes. The liberal-left has no notion whatsoever of the State withering away, and it rarely meets a tax that it doesn’t like.

Third, according to Marx, capitalism will implode due to its internal contradictions. In other words, it will cease to exist. The liberal-left counts on capitalism to generate income for its agendas and counts on its success. Indeed, that’s why zoning laws tend to favor large corporations over small businesses; the former generate larger tax revenues, even as the liberal-left decries “corporate greed.” In general, the liberal-left has no philosophy of capitalism, but instead relies on ad hoc, populist denunciations of greed.

Frankly, I find Third Way Centrism to be more of a threat to freedom than Marxism. Traditional Marxism is all but dead, but TWC is all the rage. Bill Clinton is a TWC, but his administration was tempered by his pragmatism and triangulation. Hillary is more stridently ideological, and so is Obama. Each wants to be our Social-Worker-in-Chief, using capitalism’s resources and the State’s power to solve all social problems.