The recent health care deals -- first with Mary Landrieu, then with Ben Nelson, now with the unions -- that are poisoning Democrat political waters are only the sleazy tail of this slimy bottom-dwelling plan.
The ideas behind this bete noir are all about force, and ought to be offensive to any right-thinking American. In order to increase the revenue of insurance companies, should we force people to buy health insurance when they think they don't need it, or want to chance not having it and spend their money on something else? To reduce government payments for medicare and medicaid, should we force doctors and other providers to take less for their services? To fund health insurance for those who have chosen to be unproductive, should we force productive people to pay more?
The Democrats' push for this authoritarian nightmare is all about their base's progressivism, the notion that angelic genius bureaucrats -- wonks like Bill Clinton -- are smart enough to plan the optimal distribution of all resources. The angels fall from heaven and turn demonic when their plans fail, which they always do when people are free to work around their strictures. Then the demons add even more controls to be enforced at the point of a gun. Eventually all that can be seen are the muzzles of their guns. This path was well described by Friedrich Hayek in his Road to Serfdom.
However it is named, progressivism is regressive. It has been tried and found disastrously wanting. It led to fascist tyranny in 20th century Italy and Germany and Russia and China and Cuba and Viet Nam and North Korea. Social democracy, fascist progressivism's smiley-faced little brother, is responsible for economic tyranny and the death of productivity in modern-day Europe. Now the Democrats push here the ideas that destroyed the economic freedom and productivity of those states and, in the worst cases, all freedoms and finally the states themselves.
Here is a thoughtful speech by Paul Ryan, one of America's clearest thinking members of Congress, on Democrat health care progressivism and how it must be and can be stopped.
The American people are rising in opposition to the Democrats unconstitutional tyrannical takeover of health care. Even the citizens of the People's Republic of Massachusetts are outraged, and may this Tuesday elect a Republican to the Senate seat once thought to be the birthright of the Kennedys! [ polls here]
