I haven’t much to say except to that what happened in Washington tonight has very probably set off a tinderbox, and we will now be in rebellion. May it be a non-violent one, but if violence is what it ultimately takes, we are a people whose nation is founded on such in the defense of human liberty.
[Monday morning update]
Professor Jacobson has a pep talk.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Paul Hsieh on the coming battles. And Victor Davis Hanson says that Obama has crossed the Rubicon. Fortunately, Julius Caesar he’s not.
[Update a while later]
Had enough?
As I have argued now for months – first, in August, here; then, in November, here and here; and, more recently, here, here, and here – a genuine political realignment may be in the offing. This has happened at irregular intervals in our nation’s past – most notably, in 1800, 1828, 1860, and 1932 – and on each occasion the political party benefiting from the upheaval was able to paint a plausible picture depicting their opponents as being parties to a conspiracy to overthrow the liberties possessed by their fellow Americans. This is what Thomas Jefferson did to the Federalists in and after 1800; it was what Andrew Jackson did to John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Nicholas Biddle, and the Whigs in and after 1828; it was what Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans did to the slave power conspiracy and its fellow travelers in the North in and after 1860, and it was what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did to Herbert Hoover and the business-minded progressives in and after 1932. When FDR claimed, at the 1936 Democratic convention, that “a small group” of his fellow Americans was intent on concentrating “into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives,” he was merely rephrasing the charges lodged in an earlier time by Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and their political allies.
Of course, one cannot plausibly advance such a claim except in circumstances where one has a great deal of help from one’s opponents. In 1800, Jefferson profited from the quarrel pitting Alexander Hamilton against John Adams, and by exhibiting secessionist propensities at the Hartford Convention, the New England Federalists destroyed their own party. Something similar can be said regarding Nicholas Biddle and the supporters of the Second National Bank. The same is true for the supporters of the slave power in and after 1860, and Herbert Hoover was in similar fashion a godsend for FDR.
If the Republicans have a comparable opportunity in 2010 and 2012, it is because of what I described in my very first blogpost as “Obama’s Tyrannical Ambition.” Barack Obama has a gift. He has told us so himself, and he is right, but he errs in supposing that his oratorical skill will enable him to fool all of the people all of the time, and over time he has, in effect, unmasked his own party as a conspiracy on the part of a would-be aristocracy of do-gooders hostile to very idea of self-government in the United States. There is no need for me to review the record of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress in the last fifteen months. It is enough to say that, in an administration that promised transparency, everything has been negotiated behind closed doors in a manner suggestive of tyranny and that, in an administration that promised to distance itself from the lobbyists, every major bill has been written by them and is loaded with special deals that give new meaning to the old phrase “corrupt bargain.” The stimulus bill, cap-and-trade, healthcare reform: with these Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid have brought home to the American people, as never before, the tyrannical propensities inherent in the progressive impulse. Thanks to them, everyone now knows that there is no such thing as a moderate Democrat.
I’m not sure that everyone knows it, but enough to now to make the whirlwind that they’ll reap pretty big in the fall. And perhaps years to come.
[Update a few minutes later]
Another pep talk, from Bill Whittle:
…in terms of limiting the practical and immediate damage, holding it here — just holding it — is important and essential. Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have an IQ of 130 — that would be combined between the three of them and you can get to 150 if you throw in Biden — and so they actually believe that a few months from now, they will be able to add single-payer to this goat rodeo, this bloodbath, this circus of incompetence conducted by this museum-grade confederacy of dunces. It got them a bill that requires people to pay for private insurance — which I am, of course, utterly opposed to on every level — but that is way short of single payer and we MUST hold the line here and not an inch further until reinforcements arrive in January. And they will. In numbers that will astonish and amaze the most optimistic among us.
We need to understand the great lesson we have learned about these people in this debate. Barack Obama is, to the liberal cause, a politician that comes not once in a decade, or once in a generation, or even once per century. Barack Obama is, to them, a once in history opportunity for progressives to control this country, and they will fall on a forest of swords to achieve those ends because this is the best chance they have ever had or ever will have to permanently shackle the people to the state. They know that this Health Care fiasco will cost them the House and now perhaps the Senate in November, but that new Congress will not seat until January and in the ten months between now and then they will, I predict, start an orgy of legislation that will make this Health Care circus look like a tea party.
But it seems to me that they have spent every dime of political capital in the bank and have done nothing less than awoken from it’s long and deep slumbers the American Giant, who in attempting to sit upright discovers the Lilliputian threads that have been staked into the ground with finishing nails and who looks around, blinking and disoriented, fatter and softer and much, much poorer than he was when he last opened his eyes back in 1941, but possessed now as then with a terrible anger and capable still of mighty exertions.
So, to the short term: everybody knows that Reid and Pelosi and The Lightworker himself, obviously, are all hoping to use this bill as the foot in the door for the stuff they really want: A single-payer National Health System, or at least the “public option,” which is simply single-payer on the installment plan. We can’t let them get that. Going forward, we can’t let them get single-payer, or cap and trade, or amnesty, or any of it.
We’ll see if their political tone deafness continues.
[Update mid morning]
Another pep talk, from Moe Lane: things we were told we couldn’t do.
[Update a few minutes later]
Jim Treacher says it’s not fair to call this a political Jonestown for the Democrats, because Jim Jones only killed 900 people.
Ten state AGs are going to be suing on various grounds. 🙂
Oh man, this hash is going to be settled long before the bulk of this beast kicks-in. Maybe they’ll want to slip an acceleration amendment into the public option bill.
We’re already taxed for other people’s healthcare, Ryan. And my last post was perhaps lost on you, but it was an attempt to mock Rand’s pop-psychology insistence that I’m actually a collectivist, and that my stupid comment was somehow revealing.
I mean, seriously? “Projection is a just a silly psychological shortcomming (which you insist was a mistake of your intention-to-writing converter), compared to the gaping philosophical abyss that is your embrace of collectivism.”
I don’t embrace collectivism…that was Rand reading way too much into a tossed-off remark.
If enough states want to fight this, I’d prefer they instigate a constitutional convention. It would give us a much better opportunity to cut out the system-wide rot that has infected our government in the last 100+ years. Addressing specifics in the Obamacare bill with precise legal action will be like trying to plug the little holes in the dike with your fingers, when the water is already cresting the top.
We’re already taxed for other people’s healthcare, Ryan.
What’s your point? That doesn’t make it not collectivist.
I didn’t say you were a collectivist because you were projecting it on me. I said you are a collectivist because you have expressed collectivist beliefs (that we should all be forced to pay for your health care).
Not mine, I already have it through my employer. I’m lucky like that. I just hope my premiums come down with this new bill like they’re supposed to!
Let’s not go crazy now – that opens the floodgates to wholesale destruction of any and all rights we presently enjoy. I will take the principles of our Founders over those of our contemporaries. It’s not even close.
I saw it on TV.
Did you ever see when David Copperfield made the big jet disappear on TV? I bet you believed he really made it vanish, after all, you saw it on TV!
Unless the 52 Senators are lying
That would surprise you?
Of course, considering that the House fixes take out all of the special deals that this blog has bitched about for months, you’d think that the Republicans would pass it in a New York minute.
Moron, the deals were there to get Democrats to accept it. They were trying to buy off enough Democrats to get a majority. I know that’s hard for you to understand, because you believe in unicorns and this nonsense: “Health Care Reform, passed with all American’s voices and intended to fund desired and needed health care.”
The House didn’t fix anything. They passed the Senate Bill. Then they passed a meaningless document that is supposed to look like they don’t agree with the Senate Bill unless certain changes are made. If the Reconciliation Bill really meant anything, then Obama would refuse to sign the Senate Bill until the Senate passes the Reconciliation Bill. Instead, Obama is waiting an entire 24 hours before he signs the Senate Bill without Reconciliation.
Oh yeah, did I mention that a certain Senator promised that if President, he would post all legislation on his website for 5 days prior to signing it? I bet you thought he wasn’t lying too!
My comment had nothing to do with what Rand said, except that it is in agreement.
I’m not making an appeal to authority. Collectivist sympathies are apparent in what you write – nearly all your posts in reference to the content of this thread.
And yes, we are already taxed to pay for other people’s healthcare – which is morally abhorrent and a great example of our current tyranny of the majority. Is the existence of that fact supposed to be moral justification for it? You didn’t offer an argument there.
So Ethan ISN’T a colectivist? He sure is doing a good impression of one.
Maybe he’thinks he’s a libertarian. Chris Gerrib once said he was a libertarian. Apparently on Bizarro Planet, libertarians advocate greater State power and reduced individual liberty.
Jim asks me:
“Do explain how government-guaranteed private student loans foster liberty to such a degree that they’re worth giving $6 billion a year to politically-connected bankers. For context, that’s equivalent to nearly 1/3 of the NASA budget.”
Have no idea what your point is, or what argument you’re trying to advance. Maybe you should address your question to someone who actually things the government should be in the loan-guarenteeing business.
Ethan at 8:03am–“Uninsured people are a drain on the economy, and are a big reason premiums are so high.”
Excuse me, Ethan. When I get a bill from my doctor, or the dentist, or the hospital, I PAY IT!! If I can’t pay all of it right away, I will work out terms with the institution to pay it over time, with interest. You called me a thief, sir, and I would like an apology.
I am very tired of being called EEEVIL because I don’t have health insurance to pay my bills for me.
I’m socially very liberal, economically I’m more in the center. I don’t have a problem with things like the current healthcare bill, which strikes me as a series of commonsense fixes to the problems of our system. History will either bear this out, or it won’t. I think it will. You obviously do not. I don’t advocate for greater state power in our lives, but I do feel that things like healthcare, food and drug quality, education and the environment are things I’d rather a government keep an eye on. In other words, the government should regulate quality-of-life issues, not content-of-life issues.
Titus –
It may very well open the floodgates, for good or ill. But you don’t currently have the choice between the principles of our founders and those of the last 100 years. Today, you only get those of the last 100 years.
A constitutional convention could either re-embrace those principles of a government instituted among men to preserve individual rights, or it will provide ample evidence to those who love liberty that they should prepare to go elsewhere if they want to keep it. Either case would beat living under this kudzu of creeping rights destruction.
I hope you at least have car insurance, or heaven help anyone who gets in an accident with you. And you’re apparently very fortunate, either to have such good health that your bills are so affordable, or to have the money to cover yourself like that.
How do you decouple “quality of life” from “content of life”
They seem inextricably linked to me.
Food purity and the availability of affordable healthcare and education are quality of life issues. Abortion, gay marriage, drug laws, etc, are content of life issues.
Rand, if you’re starting an extraterrestrial bridge brokerage, I have a beautiful one for you on mars: http://www.naturalarches.org/gallery-mars.htm
(Titus, if you’re reading this, you get your wish from me — I’m too happy to argue today.)
Oh, and don’t forget to support libertarian republican Tea Party candidate Scott Tillman for state rep, Michigan’s 100th district ! 🙂
Ryan, I’ll keep your idea in mind for after the next crisis war and if-and-only-if the statists solidly lose.
I don’t advocate for greater state power in our lives
[laughing]
You do say funny things, Ethan, but only inadvertently.
…but I do feel that things like healthcare, food and drug quality, education and the environment are things I’d rather a government keep an eye on.
In other words, you’re a collectivist. And one who, like many other words, doesn’t understand what the word means.
It isn’t collectivism, it’s centrism. You’re trying to pin a radical label on what are actually moderate, nuanced political stances. Although compared to your political leanings nearly everyone must look like a raging Trotskyite.
Nope, I didn’t think I’d get an apology. And for your information, Ethan, I do have car insurance, though it is none of your business.
Apparently, Ethan’s reaction to being called out for insulting someone is to add more insults.
If you’re able to afford medical coverage without insurance then you’re lucky. Hell, if you can get a doctor to see you that isn’t in the ER without insurance you’re very lucky. It’s the ones who can’t afford medical coverage and don’t have insurance that are a drain on the economy. And cause premiums to go up for the insured. So I apologize, I wasn’t aware there was an exception to the rule in our midst.
“Food purity and the availability of affordable healthcare and education are quality of life issues. Abortion, gay marriage, drug laws, etc, are content of life issues.”
So an arbitrary list of things you want to control and an arbitrary list of things you don’t want to control. No principles involved.
Makes about as much sense as I anticipated.
By the way, the analogy to auto insurance is idiotic.
a) there is no federal mandate, only state
b) it is only for liability to others, not yourself and
c) if you choose not to drive (which is a privilege, not a right), you don’t need it. In order to avoid the health-care mandate, you have to choose not to be a US citizen. It is unconstitutional.
In order to avoid the healthcare mandate, you have to pay a small fee. Small price to pay for jacking up everyone else’s premiums, in my opinion.
And my list was not arbitrary, healthcare education and food purity are obviously quality of life issues. A sick ignorant person with salmonella poisoning is not going to make much of himself. As for the things I want government to stay out of…they’re things that hurt no one if they go unregulated. If a healthy, educated person wants to marry someone of the same sex, it’s none of my business. If a healthy, educated person wants to kill him or herself with heroin, it’s none of my business.
“It’s the ones who can’t afford medical coverage and don’t have insurance that are a drain on the economy.”
You’ve misunderstood the economic problem. It should read:
“It’s our insistence on forcing medical care providers to provide service to those that can’t or won’t pay for it, and looting from taxpayers to pay for it, that is a drain on the economy.”
“In order to avoid the healthcare mandate, you have to pay a small fee. Small price to pay for jacking up everyone else’s premiums, in my opinion.” Emphasis on the last phrase. And your right to force your choices on the rest of society derives from . . .?
“It isn’t collectivism, it’s centrism.”
Is this the new party line? Define collectivism as “centrism”? How would the “New Centrism” differ from the Old Collectivism, then?
The effects of Earth’s yellow sun on my Bizarro World physiology.
“I don’t advocate for greater state power in our lives. . . .”,
But you ARE advocationg it, Blanche, you are!
Actually, I almost agree with Ethan – forcing me to sacrifice any portion of my life to provide for other people’s healthcare, education, and food purity does decrease my quality of life. I just draw a different conclusion – government needs to keep out of any and all such economic decisions.
It isn’t new centrism it’s old centrism. A position somewhere between the socialist ideal (single payer, state-run healthcare), and the far right ideal (unregulated health system, every man for himself).
Ryan, do you actually believe that unregulated capitalism would result in a better life for anyone? Do you know what life was like before the formation of institutions like the FDA and OSHA?
So.. unprincipled position. Merely the gray, polluted amalgam of other people’s principles.
Ethan, I objected to your blanket statement that EVERYONE without health insurance is a “drain on the economy”, which implied that they don’t pay their medical bills. If what you meant was those who use the services of the ERs and don’t pay, that is a different set of people.
I accept your apology, sarcastic as it was.
It isn’t unprincipled, it’s moderate. A single-payer system would be too radical for me, and an unregulated free-for-all would be too radical for me. I’m not in favor of a nanny state but I’m certainly not an anarchist.
“Ryan, do you actually believe that unregulated capitalism would result in a better life for anyone? “
Hell yes. Everyone even.
“Do you know what life was like before the formation of institutions like the FDA and OSHA?”
I take it by your insinuation that OSHA and the FDA have done great things for our quality of life, given the alternative of never having the burden their existence? Sounds like you’ve just accepeted a burden of proof. Care to provide any evidence?
I’m not likely to just accept your assertion that these government agencies ‘do great things(tm)’ and perform services that can only be provided by taking my life’s work by force.
Jim said:
“Protecting people in the individual insurance market from outrageous premium hikes,”
Ethan said:
“I just hope my premiums come down with this new bill like they’re supposed to!”
Show me the statutory language that does this.
I read paragraph (1) of subsection 2701(a) to require that within a given rating area, a high risk, adult, non-smoking policy-holder cannot be charged a premium that is more than double that charged to a low risk, adult, non-smoking policy-holder, and to be a complete enumeration of factors that providers are permitted to consider when setting premium rates. It says nothing at all about what the rates can actually be.
I read paragraph (1) of subsection 2718(b) to require a rebate of non-claims cost in excess of 20%, 25% for the small group/individual market, of total premium revenue. After January, 2014 these numbers decrease to 15%, and 20% respectively. Since I expect claim costs to dramatically increase in proportion to a less dramatic increase in premium revenue, I don’t expect this to provide much protection from premium increases.
Funny, you are exactly advocating a nanny state – a state the provides “quality of life” protections for all its citizens (except its an evil nanny, because she pays for it from their looted life’s production).
Ever read “The Jungle,” by Upton Sinclair, Ryan? Although I suppose that’s just liberal propaganda in your estimation, not a great work of expose journalism.
I am amazed at those of you who are SO happy to turn more of your dwindling store of choice over to a government that has run every entitlement it has enacted into the ground and created mountains of red ink.
A correction to my last comment: The Jungle’s a novel, I misspoke. But it is based on the author’s own observations and experiences.
And Bill…I don’t see how the bill just passed limits healthcare choice. I’m going to have the same insurance plan I’ve had for years now, but with the added benefit of keeping that insurance if I actually get sick and need serious help.
I am amazed at those of you who are SO happy to turn more of your dwindling store of choice over to a government that has run every entitlement it has enacted into the ground
Most people don’t see being denied coverage, or not being able to afford it, as the sort of choice worth preserving.
And the government’s track record is better than your description. Social Security has slashed elderly poverty and is in decent fiscal shape. Medicare Part D has ended up costing less than forecast. Medicare is a budget-buster, but its costs have risen more slowly than those in the private health care market, suggesting that the problem isn’t with the government, and the just-passed bill is the first serious attempt to rein in its growth.
The Recon bill promises to stop short-changing doctors, so there goes that one. 🙂
And the government’s track record is better than your description. Social Security has slashed elderly poverty and is in decent fiscal shape.
I beg to differ; the SSI scam has already started calling in its markers from Treasury (the ones issued when the “lockbox” was raided starting in the Sixties). Problem is, there’s nothing but cobwebs in the Treasury either. So the only way to pay out to seniors is to print money with nothing backing it. And with low prospects for anything to back it in the near term, as businesses still haven’t stopped shedding net jobs.
Hello, stagflation! Or should that be “Welcome back, Carter?”
Medicare is a budget-buster, but its costs have risen more slowly than those in the private health care market, suggesting that the problem isn’t with the government, and the just-passed bill is the first serious attempt to rein in its growth.
Ridiculous. The costs are the same because the treatments are the same. The price paid is less, because the government has, again, by fiat declared that it’s willing to pay only so much for any given treatment, a value less than the cost of the treatment.
Jim, all due respect, but we’ve had this discussion before! Your continued assertions to the contrary will not change the facts that you cannot drain from the container faster than you input, and still have any substance in the container indefinitely!
If Congress passed a law that said everyone would henceforth be required to accept welfare benefits regardless of need or want, with the IRS empowered to enforce said law, what would be the reaction, d’you suppose?
Because that’s what this amounts to. Private health insurance carriers are going to be driven out of business by this enormous, Congress-created market distortion (the same kind of market distortion that led to every other “crisis” this maladministration has used to enlarge the feral gummint) so that the public option will be the next step, followed by the public option becoming the only option.
That Jim joins in the thunderous applause for this thing, proves just how wrong and harmful it really is.
THere’s been a lot of earthquakes lately … is Atlas Shrugging?
Hope you guys in Kalifornia have your emergency kits up to date, it’s gonna be a big one.