Wednesday, September 9, 2009

America, you ignorant slut!

President Obama addresses Congress on health care, 9/9/09

President Obama addressed both houses of Congress tonight in a speech intended to boost support for his health care proposals. If you expected him to state that he’d heard the voices of the opposition and is willing to consider alternatives, you were sorely disappointed. Here is the complete text of the speech. From NYTimes.com.

In it, he implies that fierce opposition to the plan stems mainly from people bent on stopping reform in any incarnation for their own greedy and/or evil purposes. Others are either ignorant, mislead, paranoid idealogues or some combination of the above.

The reason the health care debate has been so intense is that it goes to a very fundamental issue. At the foundation of the argument is whether or not it is the proper role of government to take direct responsibility for the health and welfare of its citizens. Proponents believe it is. Opponents believe it is not. When proponents start with that premise and envision the future it will bring, they see Utopia. When opponents do the same, they see disaster.

When the President tugs at our heart strings and appeals for compassion in the form of support for his plan, it’s not touching, it’s insulting. It’s insulting because it assumes that a reasonable, compassionate, thinking adult can’t possibly be against a caretaker government. Of course if you believe a caretaker government will lead to widespread misery, supporting one wouldn’t be very compassionate, would it?

Both sides of the issue believe they are right. Both cannot be right. There are undecideds and “don’t knows” but there is no middle ground. So, where do we go from here? We could start by taking on the fundamental issue instead of dressing it up as health care reform and dancing around it. This is about collectivism versus individualism. If you have confidence in your convictions, call them by their name and let’s have the debate.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Premature Indoctrination

Turning a capitalist democracy into a socialist autocracy is no easy task. It can be done. But, it takes cunning, planning and lots of patience. The movement was well underway in this country, but the left may have tried to implement the final phase a decade or two too soon. Now they have to try to pull it off in broad daylight before an unreceptive audience.

Before you can put absolute power in the hands of a few for the good of all, you must first lay the groundwork; set the tone, create the proper atmosphere. You need allies in the education sector. You need allies in the media. You need to get big companies on board. All that was done fairly successfully over the past several decades. However, before you can make the final play, you must have the majority of the population at the point where they’re ready to throw up their hands and say “anything is better than this”.

Higher education is staffed mainly with leftists. No problems there. Major media outlets are dutifully providing the right coverage. In fact, the CEO of General Electric (owner of NBC) is now on the board of the New York Federal Reserve and is a chief Obama economic advisor. Everything’s going well there. Big businesses don’t mind tight regulation and expensive mandates. It keeps the competition down. Keeping up the guise of capitalistic activity also allows for blaming capitalism for everyone’s woes when the time comes to make the big switch. Everything looked to be in place. The public was dissatisfied with the status quo. The left made its move.

The Feds took over the mortgage industry, the financial industry, the auto industry, but health care was a bridge too far. The problem is, they misread the mood of the public. We were annoyed, angry, maybe even outraged, but we weren’t miserable. We were outraged at the players, not the game.

Now the White House is staffed with people who openly supported communism not twenty years ago, but twenty weeks ago. They were feeling confident their time had come. No need to hide the agenda anymore!

But the people aren’t buying it. The genie can’t be put back in the bottle. They have to try to play this out. Obama has to either embrace capitalism and free markets, which he will not do, or go down with the ship.

However it goes from here, we’ll still have massive deficits and a debt that can only be dealt with by inflation of epic proportions. Will we take it on the chin and get back to free people, freely associating in free markets or will be all become willing servants of a great society? I’m betting on the former.