printThe excerpt is from my new WND.Com column, “Weapons For The GOP Punditocracy”:
“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is advancing on the country with an $848 billion health-care bill in hand, which he hopes to bring to the Senate floor before he and cohorts go on holiday.
Yet the swiftest arrow in the Republican punditocracy’s Obamacare quiver remains this:
If the government can’t pull off the ‘Cash For Clunkers’ scam, how will it handle health care?
Or this:
If government can’t manage the gallery of the grotesque – Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – how will it run a sixth of the economy?
When all else fails to persuade, they galvanize the argument from Hitler. Taking their cues from Rush Limbaugh, it is not uncommon for Republican commentators to pair B. Hussein’s health care with Hitler’s hobby horses: smoking bans, abortions, euthanasia and eugenics.
Hitler and the mismanagement by government of Medicare and Medicaid (but not of the military) – this is the Republican commentariat’s repertoire of riffs.
Anything but First Principles, with which the GOP has an oil-and-water relationship.” …
The complete column is “Weapons For The GOP Punditocracy.”
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No private property rights = No rights at all
[Corrected copy of previous comment; please delete original? Sorry, I’ll try to find an editor to allow me to pre-screen my comments. MB]
“Anything but First Principles, with which the GOP has an oil-and-water relationship.” … IM
Yep, who needs principles when one knows in his heart he is all right and the enemy all wrong?
The problem in my opinion is this: Our pseudo-capitalism creates both great wealth but also great problems because it is not TRUE capitalism. How could it be true when the MOST important part of capitalism, MONEY, is controlled by a government enforced cartel?
So, the Republicans focus on the great wealth and ignore the social problems whereas the Democrats do the opposite.
Nice shot at Rush limbaugh. However, every point you made in this piece was not only correct and well presented but also pretty well agrees with the things I hear Limbaugh say on a daily basis.
I will dissent on the “management” of Social(ist) (in)Security. [With whom do you dissent, since it obviously is not with this column!] The program is IMMORAL since it forces person A to pay for person B. It’s also an UNCONSTITUTIONAL usurpation of power. [Almost all the federales do is unconstitutional.] It’s also a Ponzi scheme which must gobble more money every generation. It’s also “INVESTING” “retirement savings” in Bridges to Nowhere, bombs to Pushtuns, and ethanol subsidies that can never be recovered.
However, as an ADMINISTRATIVE matter – it is straightforward to suck up the money in a payroll tax and the old age payouts are essentially an actuarial look-up table – quite trivial in our computerized era. It doesn’t take a lot of brainpower to administer. “Jones worked N years, paid M dollars, and is Y years old so now gets P payment….”
Consider instead 300,000,000 Americans having perhaps 10 billion medical decisions per year involving thousands of “insurance providers”, 50 state regulations and state insurance commissioners, 1 million “health care providers”, and several million employers. Add the lobbyists, lawyers, and the complexities of multiple diseases. NON-TRIVIAL!!!!
Republicans never learn – “YOUR 1900 page Obama health plan is ‘Hitlerite Euthanasia’ but MY 1800 page Romney health care plan is ‘Compassionate Conservatism’ “. [Great points, as usual.]
I’m glad you speak the truth, Ilana.
Actually, the argument from Hitler attack on government-run health care is not as fluffy as people suppose. I am not talking about the fact that universal health care was a plank in the Nazi platform, though it was. I am talking about the Democrats’ supposed love for the poor, on the one hand, and their willingness to commit genocide against them on the other. Throughout the 1990’s, the Democrats loved inflicting economic sanctions against nations they did not like. During a 60-Minutes interview, when asked if the estimated hundreds-of-thousands of deaths in Iraq (as the result of deprivation via the economic sanctions) were worth it, Sec’y of State Albright replied, “Yes, we believe the price is worth it.” In short, if they were nonplussed about dangling life essentials just out of reach of Iraqi citizens, then it follows that they may be willing to do the same to you. Albright also referred to the US as the “indispensable nation,” which is the kernel of fascism, in my opinion. It makes me gag when the same damn people who were glibly writing off so many now posture as though they give a rat’s ass about the poor and downtrodden. So yes, the Nazi comparison is not so far fetched. (note: the Republicans are no better, though they’re not the ones telling me I can trust them with my health care at present). Recall the Nazis also feigned concern for the poor and downtrodden as well. Better stop here.
Link to thoughtful campaign speech from Pat Buchanan, delivered in 1999, on the futility of economic sanctions, and an indictment of the Clinton administration. One can accuse Buchanan of hypocrisy, insofar as his protectionism is itself a form of economic sanction. Still, the man makes sense:
http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-toward-a-more-moral-foreign-policy-331
This is an interesting passage from your article: “Hitler and the mismanagement by government of Medicare and Medicaid (but not of the military) – this is the Republican commentariat’s repertoire of riffs.
Anything but First Principles, with which the GOP has an oil-and-water relationship.”
Interesting to me today because yesterday I was listening to Rush and he was arguing a conservative point to a caller, and I kept saying to the radio — “and the constitution. And it’s unconstitutional,” etc. But he didn’t say that. Couldn’t hear me I guess. But your remark about the GOP’s relationship to first principles struck a chord with me this morning on account of that listening experience yesterday.
We have here in Utah a Constitution Party congressional candidate, Jim Noorlander, a fine guy whom I support, who often says: “Why is socialism wrong? Because it destroys liberty. Why is the loss of property rights wrong? Because it destroys liberty.” And he elaborates on that. The point being that it is with him First Principles, and all else flows from that.
Therein lies the trouble with the GOP mainliners. They have lost sight of first principles and are only jockeying for power like the damnocrats. This will not save the nation. It weakens their positions on everything — witness the feeble effort against Obamacare. It isn’t about your liberty or my liberty to them. It’s about something else. Watch and listen through next year’s campaigns and see if you hear anything about principles, liberty, freedom, the constitution, founding ideals, private property. If you hear that from anyone, corner them on it. And if you like their responses and can believe them, vote for them.
Don’t let’s wait for Washington to save us like they’re doing still in New Orleans. We have to save ourselves.
When government violates the liberty and property of its citizens, it inherently wrong and should ALWAYS be resisted:
– Whether it is efficient (Hitler’s Germany) OR comically inept (Marion Barry’s DC)
– Whether it has evil intentions (Nazis of course) OR benign motivations (Sweden)
And I think this is Ilana’s point. The “Reductio ad Hilterum” tends to debase the debate from logical argument into emotional appeal as well as trivializes the Holocaust (the flip side of denial is trivialization).
My previous point was that there are some quasi-trivial things like inspecting meat, delivering mail, and processing Social Security checks that government can at least perform without overwhelming inefficiencies. Navigating the complexities of billions of health care “decisions” through revolutionary breakthroughs in medical technology is difficult enough for a free market with self-correcting feedback. The current highly “regulated” government/corporate insurance structure is already nearing the breaking point. The Republicrat Demoplicans are mainly fighting over who gets to make a bad thing worse.
Health care rationing ALWAYS exists. The poor person who uses tweezers to remove his splinter vs. the billionaire who has the Mayo Clinic remove his is a perfect example. The battle is over WHO makes the rationing decisions.