Category Archives: Socialism

The Inevitability And Irreversibility Of Government-Sponsored Health Care

Christianity, Conservatism, Healthcare, Morality, Political Economy, Socialism, The State, Welfare

Unz Review columnist Dr. Boyd D. Cathey muses about another government power-grab called Trump Care. Naturally, he hopes it’ll be slightly better than the one to precede it. Dr. Cathey hearkens back to a different, inegalitarian time when the principle of noblesse oblige drove the faithful and the wealthy to take care of the needy. With the triumph of 19th century liberalism and the fanaticism of progress, the quest to level society saw the Church robbed of its lands and traditional role. Conditions soon arose that predisposed the downtrodden to Socialism, Communism and the modern welfare state.

Long, sad story; the end of history, but in a bad way.

Dr. Boyd D. Cathey:

“A large portion of ‘news talk’ yesterday and this morning has been about the repeal of Obamacare and its replacement by a Republican-sponsored medical program. The one thing that is crystal clear is this: whenever a new entitlement is enacted by Congress, whatever it may be, it is almost impossible to completely undo or repeal it.”

“If we consider, beginning at least a century and a half ago, the history of legislative initiatives—and not just in what is called euphemistically ‘welfare,’ but also in such areas as ‘voting rights’ and, generally, ‘civil rights’—passage of legislation, even if stoutly opposed and unpopular at the beginning, usually stands. I can think of only one major piece of social or political legislation, actually an amendment to the Constitution—the 18th Amendment, or “Prohibition Amendment”—that was ever repealed.”

“So, it should not surprise us that the Republican majority, especially in the Senate, will probably end up tinkering with rather than completely undoing the massive power grab by the Federal government known as Obamacare. Even in the House of Representatives many ‘moderate’ and establishment GOP solons fear an active backlash from frenzied Leftist demonstrators and, even more, negative characterizations and attacks by the Mainstream Media [MSM].”

“We shall be fortunate, in these circumstances, to get a modified bill out of the House, and who knows what the pusillanimous scaredy-cats in the Senate will do.”

“Right now, to listen to various pundits, it is the pre-existing conditions question that appears to be the sticking point. That is a central feature of Obamacare: that those already sick and already with an illness would be covered by healthy participants. But then, as anyone can see, this is not insurance we are talking about, but, rather, just another form of taxing the healthy to pay for the sick.

“The present Republican plan appears to separate those two groups of people, sets up a separate special fund for the pre-existing ill, with the hope that then the healthy folks remaining in the program can get much cheaper rates. State waiver permission would be given for those states that wish to operate the program differently.”

“It remains to be seen whether this approach will get through the layers of lobbyists influencing Congress and the abject fear that too many Republicans have of the MSM.” …

“… In any case, government-sponsored health care in one form or another is probably here to stay. And therein lies a long history of modern society that affects us all every day. …”

“IN CENTURIES PAST, it was institutions like the Church or local familial communities (especially here in the US) who were responsible for caring for the sick. My friend, the late Spanish scholar Rafael Gambra once prepared an extensive study of the Spanish Pyrenees commune of Roncal. For nearly 1000 years Roncal was almost a self-contained and self-governing entity, owing allegiance to the Kings of Navarra, but administering most of its local services by itself. The Church possessed about a third of the land, the municipality owned about one-third, and the rest was in private hands. Those families without a freehold had the right to graze their stock on both Church and municipal land. The Church, as part of its mission, maintained a kind of primitive medical facility, with both religious sisters and doctors who looked after the inhabitants. Payment was most often in goods, and, for the poor, the Church did not charge. That system was destroyed by the triumph of 19th century liberalism (in 1839) that expropriated all Church lands and municipal lands, then selling them to Madrileno capitalists. The result was that thousands of the poor, who had once had a stake in places like Roncal, were displaced and forced to migrate to industrial cities like Barcelona, where they found harsh impersonal jobs in factories at dirt level wages. And from that condition arose the eventual appeals of Socialism and Communism—and the modern welfare state–to the downtrodden.”

ObamaCare Lite:

John Maynard Keynes’ Influence At Harvard Business School, And Beyond

Debt, Economy, Political Economy, Socialism

Interesting points about what the procession of Harvard Business School elites has wrought on the American economy were made on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Making them was Duff McDonald, author of The Golden Passport.

Nothing in the interview was said about the baleful contribution of John Maynard Keynes’s credit and consumption-based voodoo economics on the entrenched thinking at Harvard Business School, and on world political establishment. (That’s not to say Keynes’ “politically inspired economic theory” is not covered in the book. It could well be.)

Because consumption is its be-all and end-all, consumer confidence is crucial to the Cult of Keynes. If the consumer is not crazy confident—even when he ought not to be—goes the “thinking,” he’ll quit consuming until he drops. In short, Keynesian economic animists hope that the holy spirit of “confidence” will enter the once bitten, twice shy lender, and make him lend. The same spell is supposed to mysteriously move the unemployed and penniless to spend.

In his wonderfully learned book, The Failure of the ‘New Economics, Henry Hazlitt summed-up the essence of Keynes’ General Theory: “The great virtue is Consumption, extravagance, improvidence. The great vice is Saving, thrift, ‘financial prudence.'” Duly, Keynes’ acolytes in all administrations are always vowing to make credit flow “the way it should.” Never mind that “all credit is debt,” and that, in Hazlitt’s words, “proposals for an increased volume of credit are merely another name for proposals for an increased burden of debt.”

UPDATED: Barack Obama’s Blabber Is Always Like A Rorschach Blot

Barack Obama, IMMIGRATION, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Race, Socialism

Nothing Barack Hussein Obama has ever said is memorable, or has intellectual acuity to it. The president’s words are like a Rorschach test: fuzzy, blurred, designed to absorb the listener’s projected emotions so that he may reflect them back in inane, meaningless heart-warming ways. The cliche is the operative word in an Obama sentence.

Go to any random site or video clip featuring Obama excerpts and you’re confronted with mind-numbing cliches. Here’s one at random (2009): “What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart.”

Rorschach Blot

Rorschach Blot

I’ll be tweeting this ill-defined babble, over which the braindead will be marveling.

A republic if you can keep it:


Should be “spoiltbrat daughters”:


So long as you keep the Obama values, you’ll be fine:


“Root-and-branch,” of course, not brunch, but I was hungry and bored:


There you go again:


Should have written “racial exclusiveness”

The Lesson of Thanksgiving: Private Property Rights

Colonialism, History, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Private Property, Socialism

John Stossel has a lesson in history and political economy for the nation’s brainless Bernieacs:

… before that first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims nearly starved to death because they didn’t respect private property.

When they first arrived in Massachusetts, they acted like Bernie Sanders wants us to act. They farmed “collectively.” Pilgrims said, “We’ll grow food together and divide the harvest equally.”

Bad idea. Economists call this the “tragedy of the commons.” When everyone works “together,” some people don’t work very hard.

Likewise, when the crops were ready to eat, some grabbed extra food — sometimes picking corn at night, before it was fully ready. Teenagers were especially lazy and likely to steal the commune’s crops.

Pilgrims almost starved. Governor Bradford wrote in his diary, “So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could … that they might not still thus languish in misery.”

His answer: He divided the commune into parcels and assigned each Pilgrim his own property, or as Bradford put it, “set corn every man for his own particular. … Assigned every family a parcel of land.”

That simple change brought the Pilgrims so much plenty that they could share food with Indians.

… It’s a myth that the Native Americans had no property rules. They had property — and European settlers should have treated those rules with respect. … The U.S. government, after killing thousands of Native Americans and restricting others to reservations, gave tribal governments control over Indians’ lives, in collaboration with the government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Since then, no group in America has been more “helped” and “managed” by the federal government than Indians. Because of that, no group has done worse. …

Deprogram your kids with “Thanksgiving Tragedy.”