Category Archives: The State

That Oh-So Original Argument From Hitler

Democrats, Fascism, History, Republicans, Socialism, The State

The Argument From Hitler (TAFH) is so tired. Come to think of it, tired is a good word for the Republicans. Funny guy and host of Fox News’ late-night laugh “Red Eye” drives home the ludicrous nature of the TAFH by sealing his Gregalogues thus: “If you don’t agree with me, you’re worse than Hitler.” But then Rush Limbaugh is not smart enough to poke fun at himself. Economically, fascism and socialism are evil twins. The Republicans have more of the first in them; the Democrats more of the last. Both parties are made up of consummate statists. Ultimately Rush’s weary TAFH shuts off a more serious deconstruction of Democratic ideology. In any case, here goes Rush:

“Now what are the similarities between the Democrat Party of today and the Nazi party in Germany? Well, the Nazis were against big business. They hated big business and, of course, we all know that they were opposed to Jewish capitalism. They were insanely, irrationally against pollution. They were for two years mandatory voluntary service to Germany. They had a whole bunch of make-work projects to keep people working one of which was the Autobahn.

They were against cruelty and vivisection of animals but in the radical sense of devaluing human life, they banned smoking. They were totally against that. They were for abortion and euthanasia of the undesirables as we all know and they were for cradle-to-grave nationalized health care. I have always bristled when I hear people claim that conservatism gets close to Naziism. It is liberalism that’s the closest you can get to Naziism and socialism. It’s all bundled up under the socialist banner. There are far more similarities between Nancy Pelosi and Adolf Hitler than between these people showing up at town halls to protest a Hitler-like policy that’s being heralded by a Hitler-like logo.”

Update III: Code Blue! How Canada Care Nearly Killed My Kid

Healthcare, Human Accomplishment, Liberty, Natural Law, Regulation, Socialism, The State

The excerpt is from my new WND.COM column, “Code Blue! How Canada Care Nearly Killed My Kid,” now on Taki’s Magazine:

“Code Blue Intensive Care Unit,” “Code Blue Intensive Care Unit”:

When the Code-Blue alarm sounded over the hospital’s loudspeaker system, my husband and I knew it sounded for our daughter. It was 11:00 at night. The hallways of the British Columbia hospital were dark. Only one emergency operating theater was in use. She was in it. The skeletal staff came running. Resuscitation carts were rushed toward the theater.

My own heart nearly stopped, because she is my heart.

To follow Dr. David Gratzer’s plainspoken definition (the good doctor is a Canada-care whistle blower), Code Blue is “the term used when a patient’s heart stops and hospital staff must leap into action to save him.” My then 12-year-old had stopped breathing on the operating table and was being revived. …

A cursory investigation into why [my daughter] coded that night was conducted. The findings were, conveniently, inconclusive. …

If you want to understand why the “subpar care Nicky had received” was just “a day in the life of a patient interned in a state-run health care system,” read the complete column, “Code Blue,” now on Taki’s Magazine. That’s where you can catch the weekly fare every Saturday.

Update I (July 31): The child can take pain. As a child, she suffered from severe asthma, which runs in the family (a great uncle died during an attack). My child’s heroic stoic composure during some of the procedures she endured in the course of this deadly disease—I cannot praise enough.

Update II: Readers: please make a habit of posting your comments to the blog, rather than sending them to me. I cannot answer all letters (although I try). Besides which other BAB posters here will often respond eloquently to your questions about liberty.

Rebutting those who say that my experience is typical of private establishments as well lies in advancing rights-based and utilitarian/economic arguments—you must address natural rights, and the structure of incentives in socialized systems. I speak to those issue in my work, regularly; have for years. But I also explain in the current column why this episode is certainly par for the course in the sphere of the “public option.”

Please check out the Articles Archive under socialized medicine and natural rights. The Barely A Blog archive (search “Socialism,” “Regulations,” and “Health & Fitness”) is a good source too, as we’ve conducted extensive debates on this lively forum.

I’m afraid that defending liberty demands the STUDY of—and familiarity with—principles. In other words, some work, a mental effort. Quick answers won’t replace the work liberty’s defenders must do. All too often readers demand quickies. Intellectual sloth extends to not even searching my accessible web and blog databases.

Begin by signing up for the Mercer Weekly Newsletter.

Updated: Doctor Distribution

Affirmative Action, Constitution, Democracy, Economy, Healthcare, Regulation, Socialism, The State

THE AMERICAN AFFORDABLE HEALTH CHOICES ACT OF 2009, the shamelessly euphemized title of Obama’s unaffordable, choice-limiting, health care takeover, makes no attempt to conceal its radical, energetic, race-based distributive impetus.

The following initiatives come under the PREVENTION AND WELLNESS (IV) and the WORKFORCE INVESTMENTS (V) sections of the Act’s Summary:

—A focus on community-based programs and new data collection efforts to better identify and address racial, ethnic, regional and other health disparities.
—Greater support for workforce diversity.

With state takeover of 20 percent of the economy, more massive, racially-based transfers of wealth and resources are in the offing.

Understandably the ACT is not easy to locate. The White House’s promises of transparency notwithstanding, I hunted high and low for the accursed thing, finally finding a link on the Heritage Foundation’s website to the Act.

As shamelessly does the ponce in power speak of taxing the “rich” so as to be able to pay for his profligacy. Was it those earning more than a million or half a million? Is this equality under the law? As Peter Schiff has pointed out, “While the government has the constitutional power to tax to ‘promote the general welfare,’ it does not have the right to tax one group for the sole and specific benefit of another. If the government wishes to finance national health insurance, the burden of paying for it should fall on every American. If that were the case, perhaps Congress would think twice before passing such a monstrosity.”

Not once will you hear the following question from the pols and their media support system:

Is it constitutional?

All you’ll hear is:

How many Americans want it?

A nation of laws? Who are we kidding. This is a tyranny of the mindless, wayward majority.

Update (July 26): I understand “Moon Man’s” justified passions, but, at times, the Fed issue becomes a blanket charge. Who exactly are those earning half a million to a million depreciated dollars? Small business owners. Those of you who work in the corporate world, outside Wall Street, know that few and far between are the high-ups who garner such wages. The rich, middle-class entrepreneur: that’s who Obama is looking to filch without flinching.

…Like A Housewarming For The Homeless

Debt, Economy, Government, Inflation, Labor, The State

A JOBLESS RECOVERY is the equivalent of a housewarming for the homeless. You have got to know that this sophistic term is a political construct, not an economic one. The term is meant to coat the entrenched, systemic effects of endemic, employment-killing government policies with a patina of scholarly respectability.

Typically, establishment economists will waffle about “structural changes—permanent shifts in the distribution of workers throughout the economy”—causing job losses, but will gleefully tout GDP growth, or some or other highly manipulable indicator, as evidence that the the jobless are fussing needlessly.

And here we return to square one: I am not sure that a vigorous recovery is even possible given government funded and unfunded debt amounting to upwards of $60 trillion, and counting. I don’t know that a country can surface from under all that. At the very least, a natural shift must take place—and be evident—from a credit-fueled, consumption-based economy, to one founded on savings, investment and production.

But, what do you know, the GDP statistic is consumption-driven: it measures the kind of economic Brownian motion of which less is required. “This statistic is constructed in accordance with the view that what drives an economy is not the production of wealth but rather its consumption,” confirms (Austrian) economist Frank Shostak. “What matters here is demand for final goods and services. Since consumer outlays are the largest part of overall demand, it is commonly held that consumer demand sets in motion economic growth.”

The prevailing “theory” of John Maynard Keynes “is not economics, but a statist political theory. Keynes’s political creed guaranteed a hand-in-glove relationship between the state and its stooge economists. Most of what Keynes advocated entails giving the state enormous … powers.”

Essential in this scheme of things is semantic obscurantism. “A Jobless Recovery” is exactly that.

So when you hear that “employers cut 467,000 jobs in June, far more than expected, and the jobless rate hit a 26-year high of 9.5 percent”; and that “wages shrank to their lowest in nearly a year,” consider these vital indicators of a moribund economy.