Remembering Ted Kennedy

 

Now that the funeral is over and the leftist media will (perhaps) begin to wind down their completely uncritical praise of the last of the Kennedy brother plague, here is one more reflection on Ted Kennedy and other rich leftists.

Teddy has been touted for the last many days as someone who wanted to help ‘the little guy’ and ‘the working man.’  (Isn’t is rather amusing that, if you work well enough to make a significant amount of money, you are no longer a ‘working man’?)  He is being praised as a leader who dedicated his political life to ‘helping the poor.’

But if Teddy was truly a champion of the poor, how is it that he died a super-wealthy man?

Ted didn’t work for most of his wealth.  He inherited it from his father, who got it from all sorts of activities, some of which were illegal, such as bootleg liquor.  Teddy sat on this great wealth his whole life, never giving significant amounts of it to poor people.

Don’t you find that odd for a champion of the poor?

Teddy could have given millions upon millions of dollars to the poor and still led a relatively comfortable life.  He didn’t do that.  Instead, he maintained a massive ‘compound’ for his family.  He lived in utter luxury.  And yet he is supposed to be someone concerned with the poor.

While Teddy was not overly generous with his great inherited fortune, he was very glad to give away other people’s money in a way guaranteed to help his own political fortunes.  This was the perverted ‘generosity’ of the Kennedy’s and their ilk.

There is nobility in sacrificing your own goods to help others.  There is nothing noble about using the power of the state to steal from some and pretending to ‘give’ that to others.

And thus, there was nothing noble in this regard about Ted Kennedy.

Thou Art Wrong, Art

Here is a recent letter-to-the-editor in Christianity Today:

I read charles colson's June Back Page column, "Protecting Our Little Platoons," with a bit of chagrin. I have no argument with services delivered by "little platoons" closest to their recipients, but Colson ends it there. If the family, church, or volunteer agencies cannot solve the problem, then that's it—you are on your own.

President Obama, citing Abraham Lincoln's sacrifice to keep our union intact, stated in February that there are services only a union can provide. I agree that the federal faith-based office would be wrong to force ministries to hold nondiscriminatory hiring policies, yet the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, and other volunteer groups are not going to fix the health care system, provide military defense, or anything else that only a union can do.

For Colson to end his column intimating that the government's attempts to improve the lives and dignity of its citizens will likely lead to totalitarianism is silly.

Art DePalma
Mill Creek, Washington

Kent comments:

Thou art wrong, Art – and dangerously so, in many ways.

What is really ‘silly’ is to lump health care with national defense.  Those who do not recognize a categorical difference here need to have their eyes examined – and not by some government-controlled ‘health care’ bureaucracy.  (No, Art, you really should be ‘on your own’ for that one.)

The mere fact that government is an appropriate way to handle national defense does not prove that any other thing you can dream up should be handled by government.

The mere fact that some problem is not yet solved by civil society (voluntary associations, businesses, or individuals) does not mean that government should or even could solve that problem.

The mere fact that someone, somewhere does not have something they want is not necessarily a ‘problem’ that anyone other than the one with the want needs to ‘solve.’

Even though Art seems to be too challenged to have realized this, when governments try to employ positive measures to ‘solve’ problems, liberty is necessarily decreased.  (And keep in mind that liberty and totalitarianism are inversely proportional.)

Governments do their work by force.  When government is set to solving all of Art’s ‘problems’ it can only do so by forcing people to live in ways they do not wish to live, or taking things from them that they do not wish to give.  What better term for that situation that totalitarianism?

When ‘little platoons’ attempt to solve problems, they must work with free gifts, willing exchanges, and willing participants.  That is the culture of liberty, and that is the only culture that truly respects ‘the dignity of citizens’ that Art and his kin seem to be so worried about.

Worst of all, I presume that Art, as a reader of Christianity Today is some kind of Christian.  How very odd (and I’m trying to be kind here) that a Christian would be advocating less ‘free and willing’ activity in our world, and more governmental force.

Art might want to check his Bible on this one.

Who’s Lying Here?

So Ted Kennedy is dead.  I am going to try my best to refrain from singing the song of the Munchkins in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’  (If you think that insensitive, I must say that I don’t care.  One less enemy of liberty on earth can only be good for liberty.)

Now the memory of Teddy is being appealed to as a reason to make our nation even more socialist by socializing medicine.  Teddy did make it very clear that this was something he desired. 

As anyone who is awake knows, the debate about this has been rancorous.  Many people are rightly concerned about key issues that seem to hover about the various proposals for how to ‘reform’ (that is, make socialist) health care.  People have worried about things like their ability to buy private insurance, the government funding of abortion, governmental encouragement of assisted suicide instead of treatment for older and other people.  (The list could go on.)

On the other hand, der Fuhrer, B. Hussein Obama, has waged a media battle recently to expose the ‘lies’ about ‘his’ health care proposals.

Now, if der Fuhrer were an honest man who really wanted to make sure none of these things were part of his proposal, it would be very easy to do.  He would not need to keep calling his critics liars.

Instead, he could very simply insert into any bill regarding ‘health care reform’ he might support some very simple statements in the introduction.  For example, “No provision of this bill shall be construed to authorize or encourage the spending of government funds to provide, assist, or encourage abortion.”  Likewise, “No provision of this bill shall be construed to authorize or allow the rationing of health care.”

I’m sure these could be worded much better, but you get the idea.  Any of the ‘lies’ about der Fuhrer’s health care proposals could easily be pre-empted in this way.

It could be unless all those ‘lies’ about der Fuhrer’s proposals are not lies at all.  Rule out these objections by clear language in your proposal, Mr. Obama.  Unless, that is, the lies are coming, not from the critics, but from you.

The Real ‘Public Option’

The news of late has been filled with great debate about health care reform and ‘the public option.’  The would-be health care reformers have also talked about health care co-ops as an alternative.  In both of these, the government is a key player, and it plays by dictating what people can do about their health care.

This is amusingly ironic, especially since most of those pushing for one of these arrangements call themselves Democrats.  That would lead us to believe that they are advocates of democracy.  They also fancy themselves advocates of ‘the public’ in the sense of ordinary people – whatever those are.

So I have a proposal for the Democrats, if they are anything that their name and their claims imply.  Why not simply allow the public to use the most democratic option available for health care (or anything else)?  This option is the market where voluntary buyers and sellers meet for mutual benefit.

Suppose your approach to health care is health insurance.  (That might not be the best approach, but let’s grant the assumption for now.)  If there really are forty-six million un- (health) insured persons in the U. S. of A. then all those who want insurance can form a mutual insurance company – that is, one owned by the policy-holders.  That allows them to by-pass those evil insurance company executives and profits.  All the government needs to do to help this happen is to, legislatively speaking, get out of the way.  This is just one suggestion.  Maybe some people, for very good reasons, do not want health insurance.  Free people should be able to make that decision.  (If we are slaves of the state, that would be another matter.)

There simply is no need for Congress to legislate on the matter of health insurance if they believe in democracy.  People can vote with their dollars, and they always do, for what they want.  All the government needs to do is let them keep their dollars with which they vote.  Think of it this way:  when the government collects our money from us by taxes or other means, it disenfranchises us in the market place, so to speak.

And when voting on health care takes place in the market, rather than in Congress, the rights of minorities are duly respected.  If one hundred millions Americans want to form one or more co-ops, let them at it.  If another hundred million want to start mutual health insurance companies, then they can go for it.  And if a relatively small minority, say ten million, want to be customers of Blue Cross and Blue Shield, they should have the minority right to do so.  I thought Congressional Democrats believed in minority rights.  They like to tell us they do, at least.

Does the government have a role in all this?  Yes, and it involves getting itself out of the way.  Removing obstacles like ridiculously high liability on doctors might help.  Getting the FDA out of the way might help.  Getting the government out of the way in general could do nothing but help.

Let people vote with their dollars for the health care they want.  It’s democracy.  The only real alternative is government dictating what health insurance or health care we must have.  That’s dictatorship.

P.S. – If you insist on some version of the dictatorship approach, don’t be surprised or complain when people compare you to other dictators, e.g., Adolph Hitler.

Now You Can Keep Some

 

This just in from Americans for Tax Reform:

Happy Cost of Government Day!  Today, August 12, is Cost of Government Day (COGD), the day of the calendar year when the average American worker has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of the spending and regulatory burdens imposed by government on the federal, state, and local levels.

COGD falls 26 days later than last year's date, and it's 23 days later than the previous all-time high of July 20, in 1982.

As your Congressman and Senators hold their town hall meetings this recess, you should ask them why you needed to spend 224 days working to pay off your share of government. You should also ask them if you've already spent this much time working to pay off government, why would you possibly want to spend additional days working for a government takeover of healthcare?

While this is a mathematical average, it is still revealing.  You must remember that much of the cost of government goes beyond taxes.  Invisible ‘taxes’ are piled on us whenever the production of anything we use is made more expensive by government regulation.  However you look at it, YOU have to pay for it.

Will the cost of government day continue to move ever later into the year?  This bothers me for theological reasons.  The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 13 that we owe taxes to those who give their full time to punishing evil and commending good.  We have a system of governments that both condemn good and commend evil.  (Examples abound, abortion being just one.)

So it is the height of theological naiveté to claim that scripture requires that we should cheerfully support our current mess.

As the government approaches more closely to self-declared omni-competence, it will demand that an ever-greater part of our lives be devoted to its feeding.  Economically speaking, that means it will be more and more difficult for people to support themselves – which becomes yet another excuse for the government to claim more power.

And theologically speaking, it means the government will tacitly claim to be god.  (And be led by messianic figures?  Just asking.)

Who Could Possibly Know?

Today I received a note from Jim Wallis at SojoMail.  In case you don’t know Wallis, he is someone who –very mistakenly and perhaps even a little perversely – thinks that Christianity demands socialism.  So I was not surprised to see that he is aghast to see so many people opposed to the current proposals for ‘health care reform.’  He is angry at all the ‘misinformation’ put forth by those who oppose the current proposal.  Wallis says:

A friend of mine recently traveled across several states in the U.S. visiting friends on summer vacation. He told me that, everywhere he went, people asked him to read e-mails they’d received. These e-mails had no author and no citations to support the misleading statements about health-care reform they contained – including the false claim that, if health-care reform passed, it would force families to see doctors and receive care dictated by a government panel. This is not true.

These egregious and false accusations are being created for only one purpose: to manipulate and instill fear in American citizens.

Does Jim mean emails that refer to unnamed friends who refer to unnamed people who claim to have read undocumented e-mails?  We will let that one slide for the moment.

At the moment, the only completed bill in congress is in the House.  You can try to read it if you care to do so by using this link:  http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf

I was surprised that a 1018 page document could load so quickly.  It is rather interesting in many respects.

The table of contents is seven and a half pages long.  Then comes the section where terms are defined.  This requires seven more pages.  Then the actual bill begins.  It is convoluted, as you are constantly referred forward and backward to various sections and sub-sections as you move through the bill.

In short, even a person of above-average intelligence would have trouble understanding what you would need to do to comply with this bill should it become law.  If there are false claims being made about this bill, Jim Wallis should not be surprised.  It was written in a way guaranteed to make it not understandable.

This has become standard procedure.  Members of Congress now admit that they do not read or understand the bills for which they vote.  So neither those who pass the laws, nor those who are required to live under them understand those laws.

Those convoluted bills that become ‘law’ that no one understands are interpreted and administered by bureaucracies.  What this means in the end is that we no longer live in a society ordered by law.  We live in a regime controlled by hoards of departments, cabinets, commissions, panels, etc.

It sounds very much like the society portrayed in Orwell’s 1984.

It sounds like one of the complaints against the king in the Declaration of Independence, “He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

People cannot be expected to comply with laws that even the representatives who pass them can’t understand.  Americans are right to be completely terrified of “American’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009.”  We are always well-advised not to sign a contract we have not read.  In the same way, we are well-advised to oppose any new law that we cannot clearly understand.

No Talking Allowed, Children

As reported in Real Clear Politics:

Preaching to the choir at a rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds, our beloved Fuhrer Obama said:

I expect to be held responsible for these issues [the economy, health care, etc.] because I'm the president.  But I don't want the folks who created the mess doing a lot of talking. I want them to just get out of the way . . . I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking. Am I wrong . . .?

Kent comments:

Yes, Mein Fuhrer, you are wrong, as usual.  I think I will say that now before your green-shirted thugs come to get me.  Most of us didn’t even contribute to ‘this mess’ you are talking about.  But for now, at least until you manage to completely abolish the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, we don’t care who you want talking.

We also will not be ‘getting out of the way.’  We intend to be in your ‘way’ every step of that way.

We will be praying that God will speed the day when you and your thugs sail back to Chicago (with apologies to Chicago) or wherever it is you came from.  Until then, wherever you turn, we will be ‘in your way.’

As a matter of fact, if anyone should shut up, that would be you.  But we are all allowed to talk, or we used to be.  So I suppose we have to let you talk, too.

It would be amusing to see what you could say sometime without that teleprompter.