Shannon Love

“Single-Payer” Healthcare Means “Single-Decider” Healthcare

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The Democrats rebranded socialized medicine as “single-payer” medicine so as to confuse people without the time to track all leftwing code words.  They did the same thing for their own name in the ’80s, changing from “liberals” which was associated with the raft of failed leftwing policies of the 1970s, to “progressives.”

It’s a good example of their contempt and disdain for the American people. They think, “People are so stupid that if we call something by a different name, one without negative connotations, they will support something they otherwise would have opposed.” (Remember, leftists rationalize that you are their inferior and that they must always manipulate you for your own good.)

It doesn’t work long term, of course, because words acquire the connotation of the phenomena they label and not the other way around, e.g., idiot, moron and retarded were all originally words invented by doctors and scientist trying to create kinder, gentler and more scientific terms to describe people with subnormal mental processes. But the condition of being subnormal is viewed as negative so any word used to describe that condition becomes negative and eventually a playground pejorative.

Deceitful words are highly dangerous in politics. No less a luminary than Confucius himself wrote that the first act of good governance is to name things honestly. This is more true in a democracy where people have to know what they are voting for.

“Single payer” is a deceitful phrase not only because it attempts to rename something in order to confuse the people but also because under socialized medicine, everyone pays. It’s just that what you pay and what you get are unrelated. It’s only “single payer” from the perspective of the health care providers because they are the only ones who ever get paid.

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Tipping Point: How Many People Were Forced to Vote Democrat?

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There’s an old joke in finance that says, “If you owe the bank a $1000 and can’t it back, you have a problem. If you owe the bank a $100 million dollars and can’t pay it back, the bank has a problem.”

There is have a corollary in politics: If get 5% of your annual income from government benefits   every year and you don’t like something the politicians do, the politicians have a problem. If you get 50% of you income from benefits and you don’t like something the politicians do otherwise, you have a problem.

Government cannot give without taking. Each time the government gives a benefit to one person, it must have taken the resources to do so from someone else. People who are taken from constantly push back on the political process. If you get a benefit, you have to keep voting for the party or block that keeps that benefit’s policies in law, otherwise, the benefit will go away.

At first, the politicians are solicitous because while the benefit is nice to have, you don’t need it all that badly. You sum up all pluses and negatives of all the other policies of   the politician and if your sum doesn’t come up positive, you shrug, vote for the other guy, and wave goodbye   to the benefit.

Gradually, over time the benefits add up. Free education for the kids, a government job, a union job at far over market wage, the promise of social security, free-health care etc. At some ill defined point, you suddenly realize that so much of your functional income, perhaps   most of it, depends on government benefits. If you lose those benefits, you could lose everything.

Now when you sum up all the pluses and negatives of the other policies of the politicians and the sum doesn’t come up negative…. you vote for him anyway. You no longer have any say. Instead of politicians groveling for your support, you grovel for theirs. Even if no explicit deal is ever mentioned or even thought of, you know that you have to make sure the benefit givers win no matter how they might disgust you otherwise. Now, they can do whatever else they wish and you can’t tell them to stop.

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Alexis De Tocqueville: How Democracy Can Become Tyranny

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Robert Schwartz posted some relevant excerpts from De Tocqueville in the comments to my previous post but for brevities sake in the comments, I decided to move them here.  

Besides, they deserve a higher profile.  

Shannon is absolutely correct. Abortion is just a shiny bauble they use to distract the rubes from the enormity of what they are doing — which is constructing a most awful tyranny.

I am going to set out here a few paragraphs from the most famous and most perceptive student of America — Alexis De Tocqueville, in which explains how democracy can become tyranny. I ask you to read them with the utmost care. They could have been written today:

“Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville Vol. 2 Sec. 4 Chapter 6
“What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear”
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch4_06.htm

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No sovereign ever lived in former ages so absolute or so powerful as to undertake to administer by his own agency, and without the assistance of intermediate powers, all the parts of a great empire; none ever attempted to subject all his subjects indiscriminately to strict uniformity of regulation and personally to tutor and direct every member of the community. The notion of such an undertaking never occurred to the human mind; and if any man had conceived it, the want of information, the imperfection of the administrative system, and, above all, the natural obstacles caused by the inequality of conditions would speedily have checked the execution of so vast a design.

 

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Abortion: The Only Freedom the Democrats Will Leave You

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[Note: This post isn’t really about abortion itself but instead about the exception Democrats make for the issue of abortion in their ideology. It didn’t have to be abortion with all it’s related moral and legal complexity. It could have been some other medical procedure or anything that affects the human body. Don’t get distracted by the broader issues of abortion itself.]

The 2012 Democratic platform states:

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay. We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right. Abortion is an intensely personal decision between a woman, her family, her doctor, and her clergy; there is no place for politicians or government to get in the way.. [emp added]

The Democrats claim to support abortion, even to the extremes, because they believe that women own their own bodies and have the right to perfectly control anything that happens to those bodies. They argue that as long as any part of the fetus/infant remains inside the woman’s body, it directly affects her body and she has a right kill the fetus if she so chooses. Any interference in that choice is social and government violation of the principle of self-ownership and control.

That sounds good … but the Democrats are obviously lying. The Democrats don’t really believe that women own their own bodies nor that women have an innate right to control what happens to those bodies.

I state that with perfect confidence  because once you stop to think about it, it becomes obvious that the Democrats commitment to “Our bodies, our choice,” begins and ends with abortion.

Far from being the natural outgrowth of a broad philosophical commitment to the idea of self-ownership and control of our own bodies, the Democrats stance on the right to abortion is the sole and glaring exception to an ideology that otherwise treats the bodies of women like the bodies of government owned cattle.

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