A Moral Duty

Politico reports the latest tag team effort between Bill Clinton and Al Gore to drum up support for Obama Care. Speaking at the Tennessee Democratic Party's annual Jackson Day dinner, Gore, "Playing off the focus of the Kennedy funeral on the Gospel of Matthew’s parable of Jesus taking care of “the least of us,” thundered that the country has “a moral duty to pass health care reform. This year.”

A moral duty.

Last year I warned you not to let the political left claim the moral high ground. So here we are at the point where they are attempting to do exactly that. It is their ultimate argument. Those who are not armed with an understanding of morality are defenseless. And that is likely to include the Republicans and conservatives who are not able to see that there is no morality in being your brother's keeper if you are forced to do it. To the contrary, it is coercing your neighbor into being his brother's keeper that is immoral.

The health care debate can only be won permanently if it is taken to the fundamental level. Gore's assertion provides the opportunity to do that. If it remains unchallenged, a defeat of the current proposal to have government controlled health care will be only a temporary bump on the road to serfdom.

Please study "Let's Have Some Real Change for a Change" and confront this issue directly and publicly.

You Are Still the Enemy of the State

In November, I advised you that you are the enemy of the State (the Government). Please revisit that post. Nothing much has changed.

The U.S. District Court in New York has now ruled that the Fed must disclose the recipients of its loans and also identify the garbage assets that it swapped at par for Treasuries. Predictably, the Fed is still resisting disclosure (belying its lip service to transparency), arguing that they don't want depositors to know how bad off their banks are and they don't want the banks' shareholders to know either. See Quelle Surprise! Fed Uses Scare Tactics to Try to Forestall Loan Disclosures by Yves Smith on Naked Capitalism. These people have no shame. It is like the postmodern criminal who killed his mother and father and threw himself on the mercy of the court because he was an orphan.

And now the Obama Administration has announced that it will appoint Helicopter Ben Bernanke to another term as head of the Fed. This guy is a criminal who, you may recall, I suggested, should be accorded the same status in society as a child molester, robber or rapist who preys upon the innocent and unsuspecting. And apparently he and Henry Paulson are being given a pass by the SEC. Bernanke's reappointment is consistent with other Obama appointments.

Some in the fawning media are saying that President Obama should inherit the Camelot mantle. Even if you were one of those who pines for the return of the glamor and mystique of the Kennedys, you ought not to buy in to this suggestion. First and foremost, President Obama has not surrounded himself with the intellectual firepower that John Kennedy did. To the contrary, Obama has surrounded himself with second-rate radical left-wing ideaogues bent on ending economic and political freedom and growing the size of the federal government and its power over the individual.

Consider, for example, Ezekiel Emanuel, an Administration health care policy advisor. This person is truly scary. He would have a government board place the interests of "society" over the interest of an individual and have the government makes the individual's health care choices. This is what socialism is all about: elevation of "society" over the individual. But to articulate the interests of "society" you need an authority, a leader. While the promoters of socialism believe that such authorities will be benevolent, we know better -- they will be benevolent to some at the expense of others. Now you know why protesters are worried about "Nazis" in the Administration.

Raw Footage Exposes AARP and Many Others

Please See AARP Organizers Cancel ‘Listening Session’ After Participants Refuse to ‘Keep Their Comments Quiet’

The headlines in today's Drudge Report reveal more than a few nationwide grumblings about proposals to nationalize health care:

Tampa: Protests, passions roiling town hall meeting on health care
St. Louis: Six people, including P-D reporter, arrested at Carnahan meeting
Little Rock: Rowdy crowd grills congressmen over healthcare reform
Miami: Tempers flare in South Florida over healthcare overhaul
Simsbury, CT: Protesters Confront U.S. Representative At Simsbury Supermarket Meeting
Utica: Man Yells "You're A Liar" To House Leader Steny Hoyer: *** "You're lying to me," said Don Jeror as he loudly interrupted Hoyer. "Just because I don't have sophisticated language, I can recognize a liar when I see one." *** "Why would you guys try to stuff a health care bill down our throats in three to four weeks, when the President took six months to pick a dog for his kids?!"
Houston: Physicians speak out on health care bill
Michigan: Tempers flare over health care plan
Denver: Pelosi's visit to Denver a lightning rod

A man in Little Rock raised the John Galt solution: "You Need To Get The Government The Hell Out Of Our Way."

The politicians are fighting back. President Obama has launched a White House Program, which is probably illegal, to identify the individuals who send suspicious e-mails opposing the Democrats’ health care proposals, by asking citizens to rat out their fellow citizens. The White House Press Secretary accused a reporter who asked about the program of “hatching a nefarious plot.” The Democratic National Committee has launched a media (propaganda) campaign, including ads that attack the protesters at town hall meetings. And they have been controlling the debate by retreating from town meetings in favor of conference calls.

It seems that, rather than selling their health care on the merits of change, the Democrats are attacking the opponents of government control with a well-worn but deplorable debating tactic: when you have no arguments on the merits, attack the speaker personally. Nancy Pelosi complains that the opponents of government health care are “carrying swastikas.” (There were some swastikas but they were used by the protesters to compare ObamaCare to Nazism. Pelosi was insinutaing that the protesters are Nazis.). Rep. Brian Baird also conjures up Nazis by accusing protesters of using “Brown Shirt” tactics. Harry Reid “accused the protesters of trying to "sabotage" the democratic process.” And others go after the usual suspects:

The White House and Democrats have called the protests an orchestrated "mob" driven by Republican- and industry-backed groups and conservative talk radio and television hosts.

"They have been sent by their corporate and lobbyist bankrollers to disrupt, heckle and block meaningful debate. This is a desperation move, meant to slow the momentum for change," said Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO labor group.

But the discontent is neither faked nor staged by the GOP.

Aside from the merits of any proposal, the level of complexity and the vast implications of changing 15% of the economy in a rush by government fiat with an unread 1,000-page Bill – especially the one sector of the economy that is the most personal – simply unnerves people. Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal, seems to have put it succinctly: “You are terrifying us.” In the same article, she also makes an astute observation:

In an odd way [President Obama] sometimes seems not to have fully absorbed the awesome stature of his office. You really, if you’re president, can’t call an individual American stupid, if for no other reason than that you’re too big. You cannot allow your allies to call people protesting a health-care plan “extremists” and “right wing,” or bought, or Nazi-like, either. They’re citizens. They’re concerned. They deserve respect."

Politically Mean-Spirited and Dangerous

"Depicting the president as demonic and a socialist goes beyond political spoofery," says Hutchinson [Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson], "it is mean-spirited and dangerous." That was the cry of the Obama supporters in L.A. who objected to the picture of President Obama made up as The Joker with the caption, "Socialism."

So why do the socialists object to being called socialists? Please revisit my previous answers to this question at "Healthcare Bill: Socialism?" and "What's So Bad about Socialism?"

A rose by any other name is still a rose. Even those who deserve the appellation view it as an epithet. [Update 8-12-09:] Now the main stream media is moving to persuade people to be more reluctant to toss around the word.

I make an 8-hour round-trip trek to from Annapolis to New Jersey at least monthly and use the time in my car to sample Talk Radio -- Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingalls, Michael Savage and others. You are no doubt aware that liberal talk shows have been singularly unsuccessful and "conservative" talk shows have been wildly successful. The reason is that the message of the "conservatives" -- individual liberty and limited government -- resonate with those who are interested in ideas, and who listen.

Today's trip was filled with revealing and thoughtful discussions about the Democrats' attempt to nationalize 15% of the economy and to control among many other things, in the President's words, your "end of life decisions."

ARE YOU LISTENING TO THIS! --- THEY WANT THE BUREAUCRACY TO CONTROL YOUR END OF LIFE DECISIONS!

So what's so bad about socialism? Well, there you have it: they presume to control your life -- and death.

Your Congressman is home this month. If you don't find a way to reach him, through town meetings or otherwise, to tell him to oppose further government involvement in the health care system, you and your children will suffer their decisions about when you live and when you die. Does it sound important? Does it sound like you need to get politically active? Or have you given up?