ObamaCare
Good column by Samuelson: Obama's illusions of cost-control. He's right, but I'm not sure it matters. This scam is being pushed for reasons that have little to do with improving health care. It's actually about re-making America on the European social-democratic model, at any cost. This has always been the liberal dream, and who can put a price tag on a dream? Government-guaranteed health care gets the social-democratic camel's nose into the tent, and the neck, and the hump.
That's why all the arguments about costs, performance, incremental reform, etc., make no dent at all in liberals' determination to pass it into law. For the left, socialized medicine has always been the Holy Grail, and it remains the Holy Grail no matter how many leaks and dents it has, or whether the American people want to drink out of it or not. To liberals, if people reject the idea it can only be because they are too stupid and duped to see their own best interests.
That's the Marxian doctrine of False Consciousness. Overcoming False Consciousness requires, of course, concerted action by a determined guiding elite, a group with the discipline to ignore the preferences that ordinary people express. The arrogance of that position is apparent, as is its deeply anti-democratic essence. But left-liberals have never been comfortable with the disorder of democracy, much preferring that society be guided by an administrative elite. Plato's Republic with its Philosopher Kings comes to mind; I do suspect that Obama see himself as a Philosopher King. That Plato's Republic would be fascist to its core, as it certainly was, should come as no surprise.
Byron
That's why all the arguments about costs, performance, incremental reform, etc., make no dent at all in liberals' determination to pass it into law. For the left, socialized medicine has always been the Holy Grail, and it remains the Holy Grail no matter how many leaks and dents it has, or whether the American people want to drink out of it or not. To liberals, if people reject the idea it can only be because they are too stupid and duped to see their own best interests.
That's the Marxian doctrine of False Consciousness. Overcoming False Consciousness requires, of course, concerted action by a determined guiding elite, a group with the discipline to ignore the preferences that ordinary people express. The arrogance of that position is apparent, as is its deeply anti-democratic essence. But left-liberals have never been comfortable with the disorder of democracy, much preferring that society be guided by an administrative elite. Plato's Republic with its Philosopher Kings comes to mind; I do suspect that Obama see himself as a Philosopher King. That Plato's Republic would be fascist to its core, as it certainly was, should come as no surprise.
Byron
posted by Byron | Tuesday, March 16, 2010
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