Upon completion, after some 12 years, of her novel ATLAS SHRUGGED, Ayn Rand remarked to some friends; “I know that I am challenging the cultural tradition of two and a half thousand years”.
Later, in searching for a publisher, a primary consideration for Rand was to find someone who understood fully the intellectual and philosophical implications of her book and who would be willing to face the storm of hostility she expected it to touch off. In a meeting with Random House, vice-president Donald Klopfer stated; “If you propose to offer a moral defense of capitalism, wouldn’t you have to clash with the entire tradition of Judeo-Christian ethics?” Rand chose Random House.
Atlas Shrugged was published on October 10, 1957, 50 years ago today. As Rand predicted, and following the pattern of her previous novel THE FOUNTAINHEAD but on a much wider and more intense scale, ATLAS SHRUGGED touched off a firestorm of criticism and almost universally negative reviews. And again as in the case of her previous novel, ATLAS became an instant and huge commercial success, powered mainly through the grassroots by word-of-mouth. On the success of AS, Random House’s Bennett Cerf told Ayn Rand: “It’s remarkable! In all my years of publishing, I’ve never seen anything like it. To break through against such enormous opposition!”
Today ATLAS SHRUGGED (as well as all of Ayn Rand’s books, both fiction and non-fiction), continues to sell briskly and in fact its sales are accelerating. AS and its philosophy Objectivism, laid out by Rand in a series of non-fiction books, lectures, and essays have generated world-wide interest and influence that has steadily grown stronger as the years pass. The movie version of the novel, with Angelina Joli contracted to play the heroine Dagney Taggart (which she says has been a life-long ambition of hers) is tentatively slated for release in 2008.
The moral revolution in AS, demonstrated in the form of a breathtaking action story that makes the book hard to put down, is that rational, enlightened self-interest rather than altruistic self-sacrificial service to others is the proper moral code for man to live by. Thus, Ayn Rand has broken the monopoly on morality held by altruism (both religious and secular). Based on neither the commands of a supernatural being (religion) nor on the commands of “society” (secular), the Objectivist ethics is based on man’s life on earth and the objectively provable requirements for his survival as an individual human being.
Under Rand's code of ethics, both altruism and the conventional view of selfishness are rejected as two sides of the same coin, both requiring human sacrifice. Thus, rational selfishness means living one's life by one's own effort and for one's own long term happiness, neither sacrificing oneself to others (altruism), nor sacrificing others to oneself (conventional selfishness). Needless to say, this non-sacrificial code of morality is the most widely misunderstood aspect of Ayn Rand's Objectivism and a full understanding of it requires much thought and study. Fortunately, Rand has presented a great (and entertaining) place to start; with her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
While the widespread and growing influence of the ideas presented in AS both in America and around the world and among both ordinary people and prominent persons are beyond question, how deeply rooted that influence is in the culture is not easily gauged. Undoubtedly, the number of people who call themselves Objectivists is still very small. What is certain is that parts of Rand’s philosophy are scattered widely among many millions of people who might not agree with it in its entirety. I also believe that there are many “closet” Rand admirers, even in the religious community, who find much to agree with her on but who, nonetheless, may not want to identify with an atheist, or who perhaps do not feel comfortable having to defend a philosophy they do not fully understand (which was me until very recently). Still others may be inspired by the heroic view of man presented through the novel’s characters while finding very little agreement with the political/social ideals they represent. Hillary Clinton, for example, claims to have been influenced by Ayn Rand but one would hardly call her a believer in limited government.
On peoples' personal lives is likely where ATLAS's strongest influence has occurred thus far. In an essay (see link below), Dr. Yaron Brook describes this phenomena: "As executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, I see the impact of Atlas Shrugged on a daily basis. I'm continually amazed by how many people, from every walk of life and every part of the planet, from high school students to political activists in countries from Hong Kong to Belarus to Ghana, eagerly tell me: ' Atlas Shrugged changed my life.'Scores of business leaders, from CEOs of Fortune 500 companies to young entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, say they have derived great spiritual fuel from Atlas Shrugged. Many tell me that the novel has motivated them to make the most of their lives, inspiring them to be more ambitious, more productive, and more successful in their work. And many of America's politicians and intellectuals who claim to fight for economic freedom name Atlas Shrugged as the book that has most inspired them."
ATLAS SHRUGGED (as well as THE FOUNTAINHEAD) has definitely been a source of inspiration to me over the years. Since discovering ATLAS some 40 years ago, I have read both novels twice in their entirety and have turned to them enumerable times to re-read particular scenes. "Re-living" the way the novel's heros dealt with, struggled and won against impossible odds without sacrificing their principles has given me fuel and optimism, especially during times when I was feeling particularly overwhelmed in my life.
One good barometer of Rand’s and her novel’s influence can be measured by the level of criticism and outright hostility toward her ideas. By this measure, her influence is certainly growing. This is not surprising, considering the growing number of trained Objectivist intellectuals who regularly appear on the major news outlets such as CNBC, Fox News, CNN, etc., as well as by the number of their letters and op-eds published in major newspapers around the country. In addition, the academic barriers to serious study of Objectivism are steadily breaking down with more than 30 major universities now offering courses by Objectivist professors, and Objectivist study clubs operating on campuses around the country.
Criticism of AS and of Rand has usually been of the ad hominem variety. In fact, every attack I have ever seen has involved use of snide, unsubstantiated, anti-intellectual insults, or else was based on honest misunderstanding, willful misrepresentations, or outright lies. I have yet to see a solid refutation based on an accurate representation of any of her fundamental ideas or viewpoints. But, with the still limited but growing number of Objectivist scholars, thanks in large part to the educational programs of the Ayn Rand Institute, it will become increasingly difficult for critics to avoid confronting Objectivism head-on on the intellectual level.
So, 50 years after publication, ATLAS SHRUGGED and its radical new philosophy of reason/rational egoism/ individual rights/capitalism has become a force to be reckoned with. In the future, Ayn Rand’s ideas promise to add a whole new, and badly needed, dimension to the cultural/political battles.
Happy Anniversary, ATLAS SHRUGGED
P.S.- See also the essays "The influence of Atlas Shrugged", "Ayn Rands Legacy of Reason and Freedom" and "Good press for Objectivism and Atlas Shrugged" at Principles in Practice, the blog of The Objective Standard. Also on Forbes there is an interesting piece describing the surging interest in Ayn Rand.
See Post Reference 12
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Sunday, October 7, 2007
A Hollow Victory
President Bush's veto of SCHIP is far from the tough stand against the incremental advance toward socialized medicine that Bush himself warned about. In fact, he and the GOP leadership are doing more to advance the Democrats' agenda than the Dems could hope to do on their own.
In vetoing this bill, Bush simultaneously declared his support for the original SCHIP program, while throwing up the white flag of surrender by signaling his intention to compromise with congress on an SCHIP expansion bill which would cost less. Bush has proposed a $30 billion dollar 5-year SCHIP bill. The vetoed bill was for $60 billion.
Thus, the war is over, declared Bush. The Left has won. The only fight left will be over where between $30 and $60 billion the final cost will be.
The Dems' response was swift and brutal. "Heartless veto", cried Harry Reid, Senate majority leader, "Bush is denying health care to millions of low-income kids in America." This is said about a man whose disagreement over the program is only a matter of degree, not on principled opposition.
"We're not going to compromise",declared Reid.
Thus the Democrats appear confidant, consistent, and morally certain; while the Republicans look cowardly and unprincipled (which most of them are, today). Worse still, the GOP will now have to endure the vicious attacks of the left-wing smear merchants for opposing SCHIP, without even having opposed it!
Had the GOP put up a united and principled fight to not only kill SCHIP, but to offer instead a plan of their own to correct the major flaws in government policies that are driving up the cost of health care and health care insurance, they at least would have accomplished something in return for having to withstand the assault from the Left. They would have at least offered America a strong alternative while laying the foundation for a principled election strategy on health care for 2008.
Instead, they are withering and handing the Dems a gift by not forcing them to acknowledge and defend their blatantly socialist agenda.
What is sickenly frustrating to me is that the Republicans do have the makings of a comprehensive health care reform plan. Ideas such as restoring competition to the insurance market by ending the ban on inter-state sales of insurance products; rolling back and ending government mandates on what must be included in insurance policies, thus allowing individuals to tailor their policies to their own interests (age, income, marital status, chosing deductables, etc.); and attacking the ridiculous government-imposed third-party-payer system of health care financing, through HSAs and individual tax write-offs as generous as those offered to employers, have all been floating around Congress in GOP-sponsored bills.
Our health care financing system is in deep trouble, becoming steadily less affordable even to middle class families. The cause is massive government intrusion into almost every facet of health care. Most segments of our economy, being comparatively free from state regulation, are marked by falling prices relative to income, thus bringing the benefits of industrial production of goods and services to lower and lower income levels. Look around and you will see that nearly everything we take for granted, from cars to telephones to appliances to indoor plumbing to television to jet travel to cable to all manner of electronics etc., etc., etc. started out as luxury items for the rich but steadily became affordable to even those classified as "poor" as producers sought to expand their markets through relentless cost-cutting. The same degree of freedom, with Americans paying directly for the medical products amd services they need and desire, would do the same for health care.
The above-described ideas are a start toward what could be a comprehensive plan for radical reform along free market lines that would offer Americans "A choice, not an echo" (to borrow a phrase from the 1964 Goldwater campaign). Such a plan, centered around the concept of individual rights, would require a degree of political courage that is not now evident among the GOP leadership, with the possible exception of Rudy Guiliani (stay tuned).
First, the Republican party must unite behind a single comprehensive proposal, rejecting the Mitt Romney approach (which served as a model for the Hillary Clinton scheme).
Second, the party must break with President Bush and his neo-conservative backers, who suckered the Reagan/Goldwater conservatives (including me) and thus destroyed that coalition. Bush on 9/25 told the U.N. that "everyone 'has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food and clothing and housing and medical care' and that the American government has a duty to privide for those needs" (David Holcberg letter in the New York Sun 10/1/07). As N.J. Star-Ledger conservative columnist Paul Mulshine recently pointed out, the neo-cons' roots stem from the liberal-left and their stripes have never changed.
Third, the GOP must declare explicitly that it is not the government's job to guarantee health insurance to everyone. It is, however, the government's job to establish the conditions necessary for health insurance that is affordable to all income levels (i.e., a fully functioning free market where individuals, doctors, and providers are free to make their own health care decisions).
As of this writing, the GOP is in big trouble for the 2008 election. What better time to boldly go where the current leadership fears to tread?
See Post Reference 11
In vetoing this bill, Bush simultaneously declared his support for the original SCHIP program, while throwing up the white flag of surrender by signaling his intention to compromise with congress on an SCHIP expansion bill which would cost less. Bush has proposed a $30 billion dollar 5-year SCHIP bill. The vetoed bill was for $60 billion.
Thus, the war is over, declared Bush. The Left has won. The only fight left will be over where between $30 and $60 billion the final cost will be.
The Dems' response was swift and brutal. "Heartless veto", cried Harry Reid, Senate majority leader, "Bush is denying health care to millions of low-income kids in America." This is said about a man whose disagreement over the program is only a matter of degree, not on principled opposition.
"We're not going to compromise",declared Reid.
Thus the Democrats appear confidant, consistent, and morally certain; while the Republicans look cowardly and unprincipled (which most of them are, today). Worse still, the GOP will now have to endure the vicious attacks of the left-wing smear merchants for opposing SCHIP, without even having opposed it!
Had the GOP put up a united and principled fight to not only kill SCHIP, but to offer instead a plan of their own to correct the major flaws in government policies that are driving up the cost of health care and health care insurance, they at least would have accomplished something in return for having to withstand the assault from the Left. They would have at least offered America a strong alternative while laying the foundation for a principled election strategy on health care for 2008.
Instead, they are withering and handing the Dems a gift by not forcing them to acknowledge and defend their blatantly socialist agenda.
What is sickenly frustrating to me is that the Republicans do have the makings of a comprehensive health care reform plan. Ideas such as restoring competition to the insurance market by ending the ban on inter-state sales of insurance products; rolling back and ending government mandates on what must be included in insurance policies, thus allowing individuals to tailor their policies to their own interests (age, income, marital status, chosing deductables, etc.); and attacking the ridiculous government-imposed third-party-payer system of health care financing, through HSAs and individual tax write-offs as generous as those offered to employers, have all been floating around Congress in GOP-sponsored bills.
Our health care financing system is in deep trouble, becoming steadily less affordable even to middle class families. The cause is massive government intrusion into almost every facet of health care. Most segments of our economy, being comparatively free from state regulation, are marked by falling prices relative to income, thus bringing the benefits of industrial production of goods and services to lower and lower income levels. Look around and you will see that nearly everything we take for granted, from cars to telephones to appliances to indoor plumbing to television to jet travel to cable to all manner of electronics etc., etc., etc. started out as luxury items for the rich but steadily became affordable to even those classified as "poor" as producers sought to expand their markets through relentless cost-cutting. The same degree of freedom, with Americans paying directly for the medical products amd services they need and desire, would do the same for health care.
The above-described ideas are a start toward what could be a comprehensive plan for radical reform along free market lines that would offer Americans "A choice, not an echo" (to borrow a phrase from the 1964 Goldwater campaign). Such a plan, centered around the concept of individual rights, would require a degree of political courage that is not now evident among the GOP leadership, with the possible exception of Rudy Guiliani (stay tuned).
First, the Republican party must unite behind a single comprehensive proposal, rejecting the Mitt Romney approach (which served as a model for the Hillary Clinton scheme).
Second, the party must break with President Bush and his neo-conservative backers, who suckered the Reagan/Goldwater conservatives (including me) and thus destroyed that coalition. Bush on 9/25 told the U.N. that "everyone 'has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food and clothing and housing and medical care' and that the American government has a duty to privide for those needs" (David Holcberg letter in the New York Sun 10/1/07). As N.J. Star-Ledger conservative columnist Paul Mulshine recently pointed out, the neo-cons' roots stem from the liberal-left and their stripes have never changed.
Third, the GOP must declare explicitly that it is not the government's job to guarantee health insurance to everyone. It is, however, the government's job to establish the conditions necessary for health insurance that is affordable to all income levels (i.e., a fully functioning free market where individuals, doctors, and providers are free to make their own health care decisions).
As of this writing, the GOP is in big trouble for the 2008 election. What better time to boldly go where the current leadership fears to tread?
See Post Reference 11
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Betrayal!
News Flash: Bush vetoes SCHIP legislation.
Socialists have apparently penetrated much deeper into America’s health care establishment than I would have thought possible. In my post of 9/8/07 I reported that the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics where supporting a huge expansion of the State Childrens’ Health Insurance Program, which would greatly advance the cause of socialized medicine in this country. Now comes this report by the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner that “[t]he American Cancer Society announced recently that it will spend its entire advertising budget next year… campaigning for a government takeover of the U.S. health-care system.”
This development is particularly shocking because the Cancer Society’s primary function is to foster cutting edge scientific research on cancer. Nothing could do more to cripple that research than to shackle the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, university research departments, and other private scientific cancer research efforts than to put them under the thumb of a government-run health care dictatorship, where state health bureaucrats would have sole decision-making authority over the medications, surgical techniques, and procedures for treating cancer.
Scientific advances are driven by one, and only one, process…the thinking of individual minds. And there is but one requirement for the thinking mind…freedom.
Yet freedom is precisely what the American Cancer Society proposes to banish from American Health Care. Thus the life’s work of cancer (and other medical) researchers and their investors will be subject, not to their own judgements and market risk assessments, but to the arbitrary whims of government bureaucrats. This would have a crippling effect on medical innovation. Ayn Rand explains:
“The progress of theoretical science and technology…is moved by such a complex and interconnected sum of the work of individual minds that no computer or committee [or bureaucrat] could predict and prescribe its course. The discoveries in one branch of knowledge lead to unexpected discoveries in another: the achievements in one field open countless roads in all the others…Who can predict when, where or how a given bit of information will strike an active mind and what it will produce?
[But] the mind is an attribute of the individual and it does not work under orders, controls and compulsion, as centuries of stagnation [prior to the industrial revolution] have demonstrated. Progress cannot be planned by government, and it cannot be restricted or retarded: it can only be stopped, as every statist government [and system of socialized medicine] has demonstrated.” (Return of the Primitive, pages 285-86, 281)
In the mid 1980s, Dr Napoleone Ferrara began research on finding a way to stop a process which he believed existed and needed to be discovered. The process, called angeogenesis, is the ability of cancer cells to grow their own blood vessels and thus feed their own growth. Financed by his far-sighted employer, Genentech Corporation, Dr. Ferrara worked through years marked by hints of success followed by devastating failures and dead ends. Driven by his vision, neither he nor Genentech gave up. Once having discovered and proved his original hypothesis, Dr. Ferrara and his team commenced work on a bio-engineered drug to stop angeogenesis and thus kill the cancer cells. The result was Avastin.
Avastin was approved first for treating colon cancer (2004), then lung cancer (2006). Today Avastin is in clinical trials for treatment of at least 20 other types of cancer. All of this progress was made possible by the vision and determination of Dr. Ferrara, his team of researchers, and a patient, far-sighted company willing to risk huge amounts of capital.
Indeed, today over 80% of all new drugs originate in the United States. And America remains a magnet for people the world over seeking cutting edge medical treatment. It is products like Avastin, which require a commitment of decades and untold millions of dollars, that would be impossible under the sufficating bureaucracy and tyranny of socialized medicine. Researchers and investors must be free to follow their visions, take their risks, offer their products for sale on the free market, and make their fortunes if we are to expect future Avastins to emerge.
My Son-in-law is a cancer survivor, and I can't help but wonder how many future sons and daughters-in-law won't beat their cancers once the entrepreneurial endeavers such as the one sighted above are replaced by research-by-political-pull/favoritism/connections which is a necessary result of state-run medicine. I wonder how many of today's children will one day suffer and die prematurely because of visionary research not pursued, risky investments not made, and fortunes not earned.
The support of the AMA and the AAP for the SCHIP legislation can, perhaps, be rationalized (though not justified) as an attempt by those two organizations to head off more draconian legislation by making a deal with the devil. But one can give no such leeway to the Cancer Society. As an organization geared specifically to advancing scientific knowledge in the cancer arena, the American Cancer Society cannot possibly fail to understand the social, economic, and political conditions necessary to the success of its cause. Therefore, one can only conclude that the leadership of this venerable American institution has been hijacked by people with a socialist political agenda. But whether by design or by some misplaced belief that they are somehow advancing the cause of fighting cancer, this is, I submit, a betrayal of the scientists, the charitable donors, the future cancer victims, and of any American who values his freedom.
Health care promises to be the domestic issue of the 2008 election campaign. The advocates of socialized medicine are energized, organized and ready for battle, with their representatives planted among some of America’s premier and influential institutions and corporations. They are announcing openly and boldly their plans. Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, for example, announced his scheme for national health care which forces everyone to abide by the state’s “healthy living” mandates or be denied care, despite being forced into the government’s plan. (see Be Healthy or Else).
The opponents of government-run health care are by-and-large disorganized, demoralized, and missing the real issue here. People such as Tanner and Dr. David Gratzer (and many others) have done an invaluable job of demonstrating the failures and impracticality of socialized medicine. While this is an important starting point, it is not and never has been enough. Some new socialist gang will always come along and say “Yes, but my gang can make it work, this time.” And that is exactly what is happening today.
The defenders of health care freedom must recognize, and soon, that the socialists can only be stopped by a principled campaign based on the supremacy of individual rights. What all Objectivists know, and others must learn, is that this is a moral battle that can only be fought on the philosophical battlefield. Compromises and me-too-ism won’t do. They never have.
In the age-old battle of the individual against the state, the Democrats have come down squarely on the side of the state. If the Republicans are going to have any chance to prevail next year, they will have to put forth a bold and comprehensive health care proposal that would include massive deregulation that puts the individual American firmly in control of his own health care, free from governmental coercion. The Democrats have left no doubt about their collectivist intentions and thus have opened the door wide to a radically different counter proposal. Sadly, however, most of the Republican leadership is moving in the opposite direction, competing with the Democrats on how, not whether, to expand government’s control of health care. In the end, a grassroots movement may be our only chance to stop the socialist juggernaut.
And our time is running out!
See Post Reference 10
Socialists have apparently penetrated much deeper into America’s health care establishment than I would have thought possible. In my post of 9/8/07 I reported that the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics where supporting a huge expansion of the State Childrens’ Health Insurance Program, which would greatly advance the cause of socialized medicine in this country. Now comes this report by the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner that “[t]he American Cancer Society announced recently that it will spend its entire advertising budget next year… campaigning for a government takeover of the U.S. health-care system.”
This development is particularly shocking because the Cancer Society’s primary function is to foster cutting edge scientific research on cancer. Nothing could do more to cripple that research than to shackle the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, university research departments, and other private scientific cancer research efforts than to put them under the thumb of a government-run health care dictatorship, where state health bureaucrats would have sole decision-making authority over the medications, surgical techniques, and procedures for treating cancer.
Scientific advances are driven by one, and only one, process…the thinking of individual minds. And there is but one requirement for the thinking mind…freedom.
Yet freedom is precisely what the American Cancer Society proposes to banish from American Health Care. Thus the life’s work of cancer (and other medical) researchers and their investors will be subject, not to their own judgements and market risk assessments, but to the arbitrary whims of government bureaucrats. This would have a crippling effect on medical innovation. Ayn Rand explains:
“The progress of theoretical science and technology…is moved by such a complex and interconnected sum of the work of individual minds that no computer or committee [or bureaucrat] could predict and prescribe its course. The discoveries in one branch of knowledge lead to unexpected discoveries in another: the achievements in one field open countless roads in all the others…Who can predict when, where or how a given bit of information will strike an active mind and what it will produce?
[But] the mind is an attribute of the individual and it does not work under orders, controls and compulsion, as centuries of stagnation [prior to the industrial revolution] have demonstrated. Progress cannot be planned by government, and it cannot be restricted or retarded: it can only be stopped, as every statist government [and system of socialized medicine] has demonstrated.” (Return of the Primitive, pages 285-86, 281)
In the mid 1980s, Dr Napoleone Ferrara began research on finding a way to stop a process which he believed existed and needed to be discovered. The process, called angeogenesis, is the ability of cancer cells to grow their own blood vessels and thus feed their own growth. Financed by his far-sighted employer, Genentech Corporation, Dr. Ferrara worked through years marked by hints of success followed by devastating failures and dead ends. Driven by his vision, neither he nor Genentech gave up. Once having discovered and proved his original hypothesis, Dr. Ferrara and his team commenced work on a bio-engineered drug to stop angeogenesis and thus kill the cancer cells. The result was Avastin.
Avastin was approved first for treating colon cancer (2004), then lung cancer (2006). Today Avastin is in clinical trials for treatment of at least 20 other types of cancer. All of this progress was made possible by the vision and determination of Dr. Ferrara, his team of researchers, and a patient, far-sighted company willing to risk huge amounts of capital.
Indeed, today over 80% of all new drugs originate in the United States. And America remains a magnet for people the world over seeking cutting edge medical treatment. It is products like Avastin, which require a commitment of decades and untold millions of dollars, that would be impossible under the sufficating bureaucracy and tyranny of socialized medicine. Researchers and investors must be free to follow their visions, take their risks, offer their products for sale on the free market, and make their fortunes if we are to expect future Avastins to emerge.
My Son-in-law is a cancer survivor, and I can't help but wonder how many future sons and daughters-in-law won't beat their cancers once the entrepreneurial endeavers such as the one sighted above are replaced by research-by-political-pull/favoritism/connections which is a necessary result of state-run medicine. I wonder how many of today's children will one day suffer and die prematurely because of visionary research not pursued, risky investments not made, and fortunes not earned.
The support of the AMA and the AAP for the SCHIP legislation can, perhaps, be rationalized (though not justified) as an attempt by those two organizations to head off more draconian legislation by making a deal with the devil. But one can give no such leeway to the Cancer Society. As an organization geared specifically to advancing scientific knowledge in the cancer arena, the American Cancer Society cannot possibly fail to understand the social, economic, and political conditions necessary to the success of its cause. Therefore, one can only conclude that the leadership of this venerable American institution has been hijacked by people with a socialist political agenda. But whether by design or by some misplaced belief that they are somehow advancing the cause of fighting cancer, this is, I submit, a betrayal of the scientists, the charitable donors, the future cancer victims, and of any American who values his freedom.
Health care promises to be the domestic issue of the 2008 election campaign. The advocates of socialized medicine are energized, organized and ready for battle, with their representatives planted among some of America’s premier and influential institutions and corporations. They are announcing openly and boldly their plans. Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, for example, announced his scheme for national health care which forces everyone to abide by the state’s “healthy living” mandates or be denied care, despite being forced into the government’s plan. (see Be Healthy or Else).
The opponents of government-run health care are by-and-large disorganized, demoralized, and missing the real issue here. People such as Tanner and Dr. David Gratzer (and many others) have done an invaluable job of demonstrating the failures and impracticality of socialized medicine. While this is an important starting point, it is not and never has been enough. Some new socialist gang will always come along and say “Yes, but my gang can make it work, this time.” And that is exactly what is happening today.
The defenders of health care freedom must recognize, and soon, that the socialists can only be stopped by a principled campaign based on the supremacy of individual rights. What all Objectivists know, and others must learn, is that this is a moral battle that can only be fought on the philosophical battlefield. Compromises and me-too-ism won’t do. They never have.
In the age-old battle of the individual against the state, the Democrats have come down squarely on the side of the state. If the Republicans are going to have any chance to prevail next year, they will have to put forth a bold and comprehensive health care proposal that would include massive deregulation that puts the individual American firmly in control of his own health care, free from governmental coercion. The Democrats have left no doubt about their collectivist intentions and thus have opened the door wide to a radically different counter proposal. Sadly, however, most of the Republican leadership is moving in the opposite direction, competing with the Democrats on how, not whether, to expand government’s control of health care. In the end, a grassroots movement may be our only chance to stop the socialist juggernaut.
And our time is running out!
See Post Reference 10
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
SCHIP Update
According to an AP article in the N.J. Star-Ledger (9/26/07), the house has passed the latest State Children's Health Insurance Program expansion bill (see my post of 9/08/07) The vote was 265-159. The opponents, all Republicans, have been taking a pounding by Democrats for being "anti-children", etc., with the Dems even using sick children as props to aid in their drive toward socialized medicine.
The tactics have worked as at least 40 Republicans switched their votes to favor this bill (the original vote was 225-204), including, to my dismay, my rep Michael Ferguson. These "moderate" (read "unprincipled") Republicans are in tight races for re-election next year.
The jubilant Democrats, meanwhile, are getting more open about their agenda. Said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, the House's most powerful member, "It hardly matters that the expansion would be expensive or a step toward socialized health care...the question is, Were you with the kids or were you not?" (emphasis added) Thus Rangel has brazenly declared that the rights of parents, patients, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and health clinics, etc. "hardly matter". He and the Dems now assume that the American people have lost the knowledge of what individual rights actually are (mostly true)...that appeals to emotion over logic is a winning political strategy (judging by the cowardly actions of many Republicans, this is also true)...and that a truly principled, intellectual opposition is nowhere to be found.
And with at least 40 Republicans willing to snatch an extra term rather than stand on principle, Rangel is probably right. On what grounds can these GOP congressmen now stand when they face the coming Clinton/Democrat assault on medical freedom? I have seen this before, and it doesn't work. Winning at any cost just paves the way for the opposition while demoralizing your supporters.
The Democrats may be starting to overplay their hand but only a Republican Party willing to risk losing a few seats in the short term by standing up for the free-market principles I thought they stood for can expose it. SCHIP is supposed to be "for the benefit of the children", according to its advocates. But no one who would sacrifice the future freedom and quality of health care of today's children can claim to be their champions. Only those who oppose SCHIP and support free-market reforms and individual rights in medicine are the true champions of children.
President Bush has vowed to veto this bill and when he does, Republicans will be under unrelenting public pressure to over-ride it. Most Americans, not having been given a true alternative, are currently on the side of the Democrats. The Republicans face a defining moment and should seize it by not only opposing the expansion but working to, as Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute advocates, call for the end of SCHIP altogether. This will allow them to begin to present a true alternative to the Dem's statist health care agenda.
The tactics have worked as at least 40 Republicans switched their votes to favor this bill (the original vote was 225-204), including, to my dismay, my rep Michael Ferguson. These "moderate" (read "unprincipled") Republicans are in tight races for re-election next year.
The jubilant Democrats, meanwhile, are getting more open about their agenda. Said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, the House's most powerful member, "It hardly matters that the expansion would be expensive or a step toward socialized health care...the question is, Were you with the kids or were you not?" (emphasis added) Thus Rangel has brazenly declared that the rights of parents, patients, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and health clinics, etc. "hardly matter". He and the Dems now assume that the American people have lost the knowledge of what individual rights actually are (mostly true)...that appeals to emotion over logic is a winning political strategy (judging by the cowardly actions of many Republicans, this is also true)...and that a truly principled, intellectual opposition is nowhere to be found.
And with at least 40 Republicans willing to snatch an extra term rather than stand on principle, Rangel is probably right. On what grounds can these GOP congressmen now stand when they face the coming Clinton/Democrat assault on medical freedom? I have seen this before, and it doesn't work. Winning at any cost just paves the way for the opposition while demoralizing your supporters.
The Democrats may be starting to overplay their hand but only a Republican Party willing to risk losing a few seats in the short term by standing up for the free-market principles I thought they stood for can expose it. SCHIP is supposed to be "for the benefit of the children", according to its advocates. But no one who would sacrifice the future freedom and quality of health care of today's children can claim to be their champions. Only those who oppose SCHIP and support free-market reforms and individual rights in medicine are the true champions of children.
President Bush has vowed to veto this bill and when he does, Republicans will be under unrelenting public pressure to over-ride it. Most Americans, not having been given a true alternative, are currently on the side of the Democrats. The Republicans face a defining moment and should seize it by not only opposing the expansion but working to, as Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute advocates, call for the end of SCHIP altogether. This will allow them to begin to present a true alternative to the Dem's statist health care agenda.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Pavarotti and Rand
Recent essays about Luciano Pavarotti and Ayn Rand have pointed to some intriguing similarities of these two great and influencial figures.
An Investor's Business Daily editorial, describes how Pavarotti brought opera from the stuffy world of the European elite to the average man around the world.
Similarly, a post on Ergosum brilliantly describes how Ayn Rand brought philosophy down from the ivory tower to the average man around the world.
Where Pavarotti was derided by the operatic elites, Rand was derided by the intellectual elites.
Both Pavarotti and Rand produced prodigious volumes of work that sell in large quantities to millions around the world year after year.
Pavarotti has inspired and influenced millions to explore opera.
Rand has inspired and influenced millions through her philosophy Objectivism and her classic novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
Both achieved huge commercial success never before seen in their respective fields of opera and philosophy.
Luciano Pavarotti's recent death has left a legacy that I believe will only grow in stature and influence.
Ayn Rand, who died in 1982, has already achieved a stature as one of the most important and provocative thinkers of modern times. Interest in and serious study of Objectivism, which she called "a philosophy for living on earth" and which I have adopted as my own, has in recent years been growing in academia despite lingering hostility. Her classic novel, Atlas Shrugged (which will reach its 50th anniverary in October 2007) is ranked by Library of Congress and Book-of-the-Month Club surveys as the second most influencial book in America, after the Bible. Her philosophical legacy and influence will, I believe continue to grow strongly over time.
The parallels in the careers of Rand and Pavarotti illustrated in these two essays just struck me as quite interesting.
An Investor's Business Daily editorial, describes how Pavarotti brought opera from the stuffy world of the European elite to the average man around the world.
Similarly, a post on Ergosum brilliantly describes how Ayn Rand brought philosophy down from the ivory tower to the average man around the world.
Where Pavarotti was derided by the operatic elites, Rand was derided by the intellectual elites.
Both Pavarotti and Rand produced prodigious volumes of work that sell in large quantities to millions around the world year after year.
Pavarotti has inspired and influenced millions to explore opera.
Rand has inspired and influenced millions through her philosophy Objectivism and her classic novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
Both achieved huge commercial success never before seen in their respective fields of opera and philosophy.
Luciano Pavarotti's recent death has left a legacy that I believe will only grow in stature and influence.
Ayn Rand, who died in 1982, has already achieved a stature as one of the most important and provocative thinkers of modern times. Interest in and serious study of Objectivism, which she called "a philosophy for living on earth" and which I have adopted as my own, has in recent years been growing in academia despite lingering hostility. Her classic novel, Atlas Shrugged (which will reach its 50th anniverary in October 2007) is ranked by Library of Congress and Book-of-the-Month Club surveys as the second most influencial book in America, after the Bible. Her philosophical legacy and influence will, I believe continue to grow strongly over time.
The parallels in the careers of Rand and Pavarotti illustrated in these two essays just struck me as quite interesting.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Excerpts 4- On "Hate" Crimes
"When the McCain-Feingold law empowered government to regulate the quantity, content and timing of political campaign speech about government, it was predictable that the right of free speech would increasingly be sacrificed to various social objectives that free speech supposedly impedes. And it was predictable that speech suppression would become an instrument of cultural combat, used to settle ideological scores and advance political agendas by silencing adversaries."
"Congress is currently trying to enact yet another "hate crime" law that would authorize enhanced punishments for crimes motivated by, among other things, sexual orientation."
From an op-ed by George F. Will
This piece by Will needs little commentary. However, I would like to elaborate on a point that he touches on, the issue of "hate crime" legislation.
By accepting "hate crime" legislation, America has accepted the principle that the government can prosecute someone based on his beliefs, above and separate from the actual, objective facts of a criminal case. It is this precedent, possibly more so even than the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that infringes on free speech rights up to 60 days before an election, that is in play here. Using the understandable abhorence of any decent person toward an act of violence by one human being against another based on race, religion, gender, etc., as a springboard, the statists have managed to establish into law a crucial building block of totalitarianism- the criminalization of ideas.
With "hate crime" legislation, coupled with the prohibitions against public criticisms of incumbent politicians by private individuals or groups during an election season (McCain-Feingold, or the "incumbent protection act" as free speech advocates call it), we can see, in the Oakland case, the power of legal precedents (and of philosophical ideas) which, once established take on a life of their own. If "the terms 'natural family,' 'marriage' and 'family values' are considered intolerably inflammatory" (i.e., "hate speech"), then it is only a matter of time before terms
like "limited government", "free enterprise", or "color-blind society" will be "intolerably inflammatory" toward recipients of welfare-state largess, environmentalist "protectors" of raw nature, or advocates of racial quotas and preferences, respectively.
McCain-Feingold and "hate crime" legislation have established the principle that free speech and thought are privileges rather than inalienable rights. This has paved the way for a full-fledged assault on the First Ammendment which is just beginning. The dire long-term consequences of these and any similar laws for our republic cannot be overstated and cannot be contained. The only antidote to this ominous trend is to attack it at its root; i.e., to repeal the McCain-Feingold and hate crime laws.
Post References 8
"Congress is currently trying to enact yet another "hate crime" law that would authorize enhanced punishments for crimes motivated by, among other things, sexual orientation."
From an op-ed by George F. Will
This piece by Will needs little commentary. However, I would like to elaborate on a point that he touches on, the issue of "hate crime" legislation.
By accepting "hate crime" legislation, America has accepted the principle that the government can prosecute someone based on his beliefs, above and separate from the actual, objective facts of a criminal case. It is this precedent, possibly more so even than the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that infringes on free speech rights up to 60 days before an election, that is in play here. Using the understandable abhorence of any decent person toward an act of violence by one human being against another based on race, religion, gender, etc., as a springboard, the statists have managed to establish into law a crucial building block of totalitarianism- the criminalization of ideas.
With "hate crime" legislation, coupled with the prohibitions against public criticisms of incumbent politicians by private individuals or groups during an election season (McCain-Feingold, or the "incumbent protection act" as free speech advocates call it), we can see, in the Oakland case, the power of legal precedents (and of philosophical ideas) which, once established take on a life of their own. If "the terms 'natural family,' 'marriage' and 'family values' are considered intolerably inflammatory" (i.e., "hate speech"), then it is only a matter of time before terms
like "limited government", "free enterprise", or "color-blind society" will be "intolerably inflammatory" toward recipients of welfare-state largess, environmentalist "protectors" of raw nature, or advocates of racial quotas and preferences, respectively.
McCain-Feingold and "hate crime" legislation have established the principle that free speech and thought are privileges rather than inalienable rights. This has paved the way for a full-fledged assault on the First Ammendment which is just beginning. The dire long-term consequences of these and any similar laws for our republic cannot be overstated and cannot be contained. The only antidote to this ominous trend is to attack it at its root; i.e., to repeal the McCain-Feingold and hate crime laws.
Post References 8
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Of SCHIP and Poison Pills
If you have ever wondered how socialism can advance in a country founded on the principle of inalienable individual rights, take a look at the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Created in 1997 by a Republican congress and signed into law by President Clinton, ostensibly to extend government health insurance coverage to uninsured children of the “poor”, this federal program is now up for renewal in Washington.
The reauthorization bill, which as of this writing has passed both houses of congress, greatly expands the program beyond its original intent. The Associated Press reported on the intent of the program’s advocates earlier this year: “[Senator Hillary] Clinton said she would introduce legislation to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program to all families, regardless of income.” ( N.J. Star Ledger, 1/22/07, emphasis added). On the face of it, this would seem to make no sense. Why, it’s opponents ask, would one want to set up an incentive for parents to drop their private insurance and shift their children’s coverage to the government-run program? Indeed, President Bush has vowed to veto this legislation on these very grounds.
Viewed within the context of the motives of the bill’s sponsors, however, this is precisely the point. It is intended to drive out private insurers. As syndicated columnist Robert Novak reported in a June 28 op-ed in the New York Post, “this proposal is the thin edge of the wedge to achieve the longtime goal of government-supplied universal health insurance and the suffocation of the private system”. As noted by Novak, SCHIPs already has been expanded to cover some adults, and this provision will be extended and presumably expanded in the reauthorization bill. Likewise, Investor’s Business Daily (8/01/07) reports that coverage would be extended “to include those who can afford private insurance for their children”, as well as “children of illegal aliens…which would extend coverage to 70 percent of America’s children “ (emphasis added).
What one must understand is that socialism is being introduced into this country by the almost imperceptable process of incrementalism. The small, original CHIP “poison pill” is following the same growth path as other Federal social programs, with the same incidious results of increasing the cost to families outside of the program via higher taxes and the increased cost of private insurance due to the inevitable price spiral that results from any “free” government service. (Never mind that SCHIPs will be “paid for” by increased cigarette taxes, so that only evil smokers will pay. Smoking has been declining for decades in America, and it is dishonest and fraudulent to base an expanding federal program on a declining revenue base. The “cost” of the program will eventually have to be borne by all other taxpayers and parents. Besides, smokers are using a legal product and shouldn’t be singled out for special punishment to camouflage the politicians true intentions”.) The increasing burden on the private sector whose taxes pay for the Federal welfare-state programs pushes more and more people out of the private market and eventually into the government-run system. Like the circular wave pattern of a stone dropped in a pond, and helped along by employers all-too-eager to pass along to the government the ever-rising cost of their employee coverage, SCHIPs is set up precisely to take advantage of this process, steadily expanding as the private market shrinks.
There are a number of reasons why the advance of socialist despotism can procede despite the fact that there is no appetite for it among most people in this country. For one thing, the tactics used by the socialists represent a kind of package deal that makes it very hard for modern politicians and most Americans to oppose. In the case of SCHIPs, the program’s proponents equate the desireable goal of getting all children covered by health insurance with the creation of coercive government actions that violate individual rights. Should one protest by questioning why some parents should be able to impose the cost of their obligations to their children on other people; or to rebel against the state’s intrusion into and usurpation of the parent’s right to make the health care decisions for their children; or to oppose the unfairness of forcing parents who have provided their own children with coverage (or people with no children) to pay higher taxes for other’s children, he is immediately smeared as being “anti-children”.
In a culture where a selfless concern for others is considered a virtue and selfishness is automatically evil, this blatant appeal to emotion over reason is enough to silence most of the opposition. After all, what is concern for justice, individual rights, and the dangers of an expanding predatory state in the face of the charge that “you don’t care about the children!”? To stand up against such a charge requires a vigorous, principled commitment to defend one’s own right to decide if, when, and how one will offer help to others, and to reject the socialists’ claim that, in essence, compassion and charity grow out of the barrel of a gun. The issue, Ayn Rand writes, is not “whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar….The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime…. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. (Philosophy, Who Needs It, page 61)”.
And this is the crux of the matter. This “popular” bill is supported by a majority of Americans because of their inability to see the forest for the trees. It is Americans’ sense of compassion and generosity that is being turned against them and is being used by the socialists to sacrifice their freedom (and, for that matter, the future freedom of the children they claim to care about). The failure of Americans to understand the broad principles and long-term consequences involved here (the “forest”) is making the advance of socialism possible. It’s not whether children should or should not have health insurance. This battle is rather a small part of a much bigger war- between whether an individual’s life belongs to himself or to the state; i.e., between individualism and collectivism.
The consequences of ignoring the “forest” can be seen in the disgraceful performance of the alleged enemies of socialism, with at least 17 Republicans, including top GOP senators Charles Grassley and Orin Hatch (who said, incredibly, “It’s difficult for me to understand how anyone wouldn’t want to do this.” N.J.S.L. 8/02/07) joining the Democrats in passing this bill by a veto-proof margin of 68-32. (To be fair, the House GOP took a stronger stand against this legislation, with the final vote being a much closer 225-204 in favor, making it likely that a Bush veto can be sustained.)
The most deplorable, and dismaying, aspect was the action taken by the organizations representing the people who would be socialized medicine's greatest victims, the doctors. Both the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics are supporting SCHIP. Undoubtedly, there are doctors within these groups who oppose this legislation, but they are apparently in the minority. In any event, if the doctors, who should be at the forefront of the battle against socialized medicine, are actually siding with the statists, then our health care freedom may be all but doomed. Whatever short term gain the AMA and the AAP think they will achieve by making this deal with the devil, they have in essence sold out the rest of America, and their own professional futures, by failing to vigorously defend their own independence and rights.
In addition to advancing their drive toward socialized medicine, there is an ominous parallel between the SCHIP issue and Hillary Clinton’s pre-school bill. In my post of 7/29/07, I said “ She has brazenly declared that the primary responsibility for the education of American children rests with the state, not the parents”. If you want to see an example of the power of ideas in action, and how the identification of basic principles can provide you with a bridge of understanding between seemingly unrelated issues, this is one. Whereby Clinton’s pre-school bill would drive a further wedge between parents and their children on education, SCHIPs drives a wedge between parents and their children on health care. The state will have Soviet-style control over the content and method of your childrens’ health care, as it has control over the content, method and curriculum of your childrens’ education, if their agenda is allowed to be carried out to its logical conclusion.
An example of how the left’s health care agenda is being advanced through the state’s hammerlock on this country’s schools, I offer this bit of information from a report by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons;
"As Task Force documents showed, 'Kids First is really a precursor to the new system.' It could be implemented through Medicaid or another plan. The Task Force advocated school-based health services, built upon 'the highly successful models sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.' The school- based clinics are a 'point of access to comprehensive systems.' About 60% of children who receive services from a school-based clinic located near a health center eventually become health- center users.
The latest pilot program is now underway in Pennsylvania- without so much as a by-your-leave from the legislature. Involved officials have been less than cooperative when legislators try to find out what is going on.
'The more questions we ask, the harder it is to get information,' stated Rep. Sam Rohrer.
HillaryCare is coming in as an educational program. The Department of Education is receiving 'free money' by billing Medicaid directly for 'mental health' services provided in a school setting. Eligibility for Medicaid has been extended to any child who is 'learning disabled,' including anyone who does not meet the goals of 'Outcome-Based Education.' " (emphasis added)
This is why the left is so violently opposed to any attempt to undermine the government’s monopoly on education. This, not some well-intentioned desire to “save” the public schools or to guarantee a quality education for the children. The public school system is a political institution that is being used to advance, on many fronts, the political agenda of the Left (and in some cases, the Right as well).
The steady drift toward statism in this country is and has for decades been carried on one small step at a time. Terrified of being exposed as the authoritarians that they are, the socialists hide behind compassionate-sounding slogans to appeal to peoples’ emotions, while loudly proclaiming their support for free enterprise “There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets”, blustered Hillary Clinton, as reported by Bruce Bartlet. (N.J.S.L. 8/14/07)
They know that socialism would never be accepted by the American people if presented openly and boldly, at least not yet. Their brazen attempt to impose socialized medicine in 1993 (“Hillarycare”) collapsed because most people saw it for what it was. So they fell back on their long-time strategy of creating “poison-pill” programs that expand incrementally over time.
One may suggest that I am being overly dramatic in my assessment of the dangers posed by the SCHIP legislation. For years I have believed that a little statism or socialism couldn’t do much harm. After all, this is America where freedom and Capitalism reign. But events of recent years have demonstrated to me that Ayn Rand was right. Principles matter. “There can be no compromise”, she writes, “ between freedom and government controls; to accept ‘just a few controls’ is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the government’s unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement… There can be no compromise on moral principles” (The Virtue of Selfishness, pages 79&81). If you look around at the slow but persistent erosion of control over our lives, not just in health care and education but on free speech (campaign finance reform), property rights (eminent domain), and a whole host of areas right down to what kinds of ingredients can be used in restaurant foods and wondered at the seemingly unstoppable trend toward even more loss of personal freedom, then perhaps you should give serious consideration to the above quotation
I have come to believe firmly that to stop and reverse the trend toward statism, it is vitally important to recognize that the battle cannot be fought on the enemy’s ground. To oppose this SCHIP expansion while upholding the validity of the original program (as do President Bush, the “free market” Galen institute, among others), is to concede defeat. The GOP, which created SCHIP, has all but collapsed as a meaningful force against the socialist advance, and is now reduced to quibbling merely over the size of the glass of poison America must swallow.
Health care has become, to borrow a phrase, the central front in the war between freedom and statism. Socialism’s advance, after having stalled following the rise of Reagan, is now experiencing renewed vigor in America. But, fueled only by appeals to emotion and resting on a foundation of widespread evasion, it is advancing in an intellectual vacuum left by the implosion of the Bush-led Republican Party that has abandoned it’s Goldwater-Reagan principles of defending the individual against the state, and thus has become a lapdog for the resurgent Left.
Beneath the cultural surface, however, are the rumblings of a new intellectual movement that recognizes that the struggle against Socialism can only be fought, and won, on the philosophical battlefield: that it is a moral fight based on the principle of the supremacy of the individual’s, and every individual’s, right to his own life and liberty; which means, in this context, to be free from the imposition by force of any requirement or obligation to satisfy the needs of others. To paraphrase the above-stated quotation- The issue is not whether you should or should not assist others in getting their children insured. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving that assistance. The issue is whether the health insurance needs of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence.
It is impossible to determine or predict if and when our country (and consequently, the world) will collapse into despotism: whether it will be this generation or the next, or not at all. The intellectual/philosophical underpinnings for a second enlightenment are gathering. But the current trends are ominous. And, as Ronald Reagan has said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction”. It is only through a principled rejection of the altruist-collectivist premise of the individual’s subordination to the group (i.e., the state), and the embrace of the principle of individualism, i.e., of each person’s right to self-determination and the pursuit of his own happiness free from the forceable interference by others, that our freedom can be saved.
And the counterattack must begin, here and now and in the name of individual rights, with the demand that the SCHIP expansion bill be defeated, and the original program be killed through non-renewal. (As of this writing, different versions have passed Congress and are currently being reconciled in a House-Senate conference committee). The intellectual vacuum can and must be filled by the rise of a principled opposition resting on a foundation of moral certainty, because only a movement armed with the right philosophical ammunition can reverse the disastrous trends currently under way in America.
I will close out this essay with yet another observation from Ayn Rand, a philosopher whose perspective is that of the broad intallectual trends of history spanning centuries. These words were written 46 years ago, and they remain as a warning to anyone who still clings to the illusion that socialist despotism can be averted without a full rejection of its collectivist premise and simultaneous embrace of its ideological opposite, individualism. In these 46 years, we have seen the collapse of American Liberalism, the Conservative Movement which led to the Reagan Revolution, and the rise of the Republican Party to virtual national majority status from 1994-2006. Yet in this period we have seen the size, scope, and intrusiveness of government at all levels expand exponentially, conclusively demonstrating the power of ideas left fundamentally unchallenged by better
ideas.
I quote from For The New Intellectual, page 46;
"If America perishes, it will perish by intellectual default. There is no diabolical conspiracy to destroy it: no conspiracy could be big enough or strong enough...There is no national movement for socialism or dictatorship in America, no 'man on horseback' or popular demagogue, nothing but fumbling compromisers and frightened opportunists. Yet we are moving toward full, totalitarian socialism...moved by nothing but the sluggish inertia of unfocussed minds."
Post Reference 7
The reauthorization bill, which as of this writing has passed both houses of congress, greatly expands the program beyond its original intent. The Associated Press reported on the intent of the program’s advocates earlier this year: “[Senator Hillary] Clinton said she would introduce legislation to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program to all families, regardless of income.” ( N.J. Star Ledger, 1/22/07, emphasis added). On the face of it, this would seem to make no sense. Why, it’s opponents ask, would one want to set up an incentive for parents to drop their private insurance and shift their children’s coverage to the government-run program? Indeed, President Bush has vowed to veto this legislation on these very grounds.
Viewed within the context of the motives of the bill’s sponsors, however, this is precisely the point. It is intended to drive out private insurers. As syndicated columnist Robert Novak reported in a June 28 op-ed in the New York Post, “this proposal is the thin edge of the wedge to achieve the longtime goal of government-supplied universal health insurance and the suffocation of the private system”. As noted by Novak, SCHIPs already has been expanded to cover some adults, and this provision will be extended and presumably expanded in the reauthorization bill. Likewise, Investor’s Business Daily (8/01/07) reports that coverage would be extended “to include those who can afford private insurance for their children”, as well as “children of illegal aliens…which would extend coverage to 70 percent of America’s children “ (emphasis added).
What one must understand is that socialism is being introduced into this country by the almost imperceptable process of incrementalism. The small, original CHIP “poison pill” is following the same growth path as other Federal social programs, with the same incidious results of increasing the cost to families outside of the program via higher taxes and the increased cost of private insurance due to the inevitable price spiral that results from any “free” government service. (Never mind that SCHIPs will be “paid for” by increased cigarette taxes, so that only evil smokers will pay. Smoking has been declining for decades in America, and it is dishonest and fraudulent to base an expanding federal program on a declining revenue base. The “cost” of the program will eventually have to be borne by all other taxpayers and parents. Besides, smokers are using a legal product and shouldn’t be singled out for special punishment to camouflage the politicians true intentions”.) The increasing burden on the private sector whose taxes pay for the Federal welfare-state programs pushes more and more people out of the private market and eventually into the government-run system. Like the circular wave pattern of a stone dropped in a pond, and helped along by employers all-too-eager to pass along to the government the ever-rising cost of their employee coverage, SCHIPs is set up precisely to take advantage of this process, steadily expanding as the private market shrinks.
There are a number of reasons why the advance of socialist despotism can procede despite the fact that there is no appetite for it among most people in this country. For one thing, the tactics used by the socialists represent a kind of package deal that makes it very hard for modern politicians and most Americans to oppose. In the case of SCHIPs, the program’s proponents equate the desireable goal of getting all children covered by health insurance with the creation of coercive government actions that violate individual rights. Should one protest by questioning why some parents should be able to impose the cost of their obligations to their children on other people; or to rebel against the state’s intrusion into and usurpation of the parent’s right to make the health care decisions for their children; or to oppose the unfairness of forcing parents who have provided their own children with coverage (or people with no children) to pay higher taxes for other’s children, he is immediately smeared as being “anti-children”.
In a culture where a selfless concern for others is considered a virtue and selfishness is automatically evil, this blatant appeal to emotion over reason is enough to silence most of the opposition. After all, what is concern for justice, individual rights, and the dangers of an expanding predatory state in the face of the charge that “you don’t care about the children!”? To stand up against such a charge requires a vigorous, principled commitment to defend one’s own right to decide if, when, and how one will offer help to others, and to reject the socialists’ claim that, in essence, compassion and charity grow out of the barrel of a gun. The issue, Ayn Rand writes, is not “whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar….The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime…. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. (Philosophy, Who Needs It, page 61)”.
And this is the crux of the matter. This “popular” bill is supported by a majority of Americans because of their inability to see the forest for the trees. It is Americans’ sense of compassion and generosity that is being turned against them and is being used by the socialists to sacrifice their freedom (and, for that matter, the future freedom of the children they claim to care about). The failure of Americans to understand the broad principles and long-term consequences involved here (the “forest”) is making the advance of socialism possible. It’s not whether children should or should not have health insurance. This battle is rather a small part of a much bigger war- between whether an individual’s life belongs to himself or to the state; i.e., between individualism and collectivism.
The consequences of ignoring the “forest” can be seen in the disgraceful performance of the alleged enemies of socialism, with at least 17 Republicans, including top GOP senators Charles Grassley and Orin Hatch (who said, incredibly, “It’s difficult for me to understand how anyone wouldn’t want to do this.” N.J.S.L. 8/02/07) joining the Democrats in passing this bill by a veto-proof margin of 68-32. (To be fair, the House GOP took a stronger stand against this legislation, with the final vote being a much closer 225-204 in favor, making it likely that a Bush veto can be sustained.)
The most deplorable, and dismaying, aspect was the action taken by the organizations representing the people who would be socialized medicine's greatest victims, the doctors. Both the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics are supporting SCHIP. Undoubtedly, there are doctors within these groups who oppose this legislation, but they are apparently in the minority. In any event, if the doctors, who should be at the forefront of the battle against socialized medicine, are actually siding with the statists, then our health care freedom may be all but doomed. Whatever short term gain the AMA and the AAP think they will achieve by making this deal with the devil, they have in essence sold out the rest of America, and their own professional futures, by failing to vigorously defend their own independence and rights.
In addition to advancing their drive toward socialized medicine, there is an ominous parallel between the SCHIP issue and Hillary Clinton’s pre-school bill. In my post of 7/29/07, I said “ She has brazenly declared that the primary responsibility for the education of American children rests with the state, not the parents”. If you want to see an example of the power of ideas in action, and how the identification of basic principles can provide you with a bridge of understanding between seemingly unrelated issues, this is one. Whereby Clinton’s pre-school bill would drive a further wedge between parents and their children on education, SCHIPs drives a wedge between parents and their children on health care. The state will have Soviet-style control over the content and method of your childrens’ health care, as it has control over the content, method and curriculum of your childrens’ education, if their agenda is allowed to be carried out to its logical conclusion.
An example of how the left’s health care agenda is being advanced through the state’s hammerlock on this country’s schools, I offer this bit of information from a report by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons;
"As Task Force documents showed, 'Kids First is really a precursor to the new system.' It could be implemented through Medicaid or another plan. The Task Force advocated school-based health services, built upon 'the highly successful models sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.' The school- based clinics are a 'point of access to comprehensive systems.' About 60% of children who receive services from a school-based clinic located near a health center eventually become health- center users.
The latest pilot program is now underway in Pennsylvania- without so much as a by-your-leave from the legislature. Involved officials have been less than cooperative when legislators try to find out what is going on.
'The more questions we ask, the harder it is to get information,' stated Rep. Sam Rohrer.
HillaryCare is coming in as an educational program. The Department of Education is receiving 'free money' by billing Medicaid directly for 'mental health' services provided in a school setting. Eligibility for Medicaid has been extended to any child who is 'learning disabled,' including anyone who does not meet the goals of 'Outcome-Based Education.' " (emphasis added)
This is why the left is so violently opposed to any attempt to undermine the government’s monopoly on education. This, not some well-intentioned desire to “save” the public schools or to guarantee a quality education for the children. The public school system is a political institution that is being used to advance, on many fronts, the political agenda of the Left (and in some cases, the Right as well).
The steady drift toward statism in this country is and has for decades been carried on one small step at a time. Terrified of being exposed as the authoritarians that they are, the socialists hide behind compassionate-sounding slogans to appeal to peoples’ emotions, while loudly proclaiming their support for free enterprise “There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets”, blustered Hillary Clinton, as reported by Bruce Bartlet. (N.J.S.L. 8/14/07)
They know that socialism would never be accepted by the American people if presented openly and boldly, at least not yet. Their brazen attempt to impose socialized medicine in 1993 (“Hillarycare”) collapsed because most people saw it for what it was. So they fell back on their long-time strategy of creating “poison-pill” programs that expand incrementally over time.
One may suggest that I am being overly dramatic in my assessment of the dangers posed by the SCHIP legislation. For years I have believed that a little statism or socialism couldn’t do much harm. After all, this is America where freedom and Capitalism reign. But events of recent years have demonstrated to me that Ayn Rand was right. Principles matter. “There can be no compromise”, she writes, “ between freedom and government controls; to accept ‘just a few controls’ is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the government’s unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement… There can be no compromise on moral principles” (The Virtue of Selfishness, pages 79&81). If you look around at the slow but persistent erosion of control over our lives, not just in health care and education but on free speech (campaign finance reform), property rights (eminent domain), and a whole host of areas right down to what kinds of ingredients can be used in restaurant foods and wondered at the seemingly unstoppable trend toward even more loss of personal freedom, then perhaps you should give serious consideration to the above quotation
I have come to believe firmly that to stop and reverse the trend toward statism, it is vitally important to recognize that the battle cannot be fought on the enemy’s ground. To oppose this SCHIP expansion while upholding the validity of the original program (as do President Bush, the “free market” Galen institute, among others), is to concede defeat. The GOP, which created SCHIP, has all but collapsed as a meaningful force against the socialist advance, and is now reduced to quibbling merely over the size of the glass of poison America must swallow.
Health care has become, to borrow a phrase, the central front in the war between freedom and statism. Socialism’s advance, after having stalled following the rise of Reagan, is now experiencing renewed vigor in America. But, fueled only by appeals to emotion and resting on a foundation of widespread evasion, it is advancing in an intellectual vacuum left by the implosion of the Bush-led Republican Party that has abandoned it’s Goldwater-Reagan principles of defending the individual against the state, and thus has become a lapdog for the resurgent Left.
Beneath the cultural surface, however, are the rumblings of a new intellectual movement that recognizes that the struggle against Socialism can only be fought, and won, on the philosophical battlefield: that it is a moral fight based on the principle of the supremacy of the individual’s, and every individual’s, right to his own life and liberty; which means, in this context, to be free from the imposition by force of any requirement or obligation to satisfy the needs of others. To paraphrase the above-stated quotation- The issue is not whether you should or should not assist others in getting their children insured. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving that assistance. The issue is whether the health insurance needs of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence.
It is impossible to determine or predict if and when our country (and consequently, the world) will collapse into despotism: whether it will be this generation or the next, or not at all. The intellectual/philosophical underpinnings for a second enlightenment are gathering. But the current trends are ominous. And, as Ronald Reagan has said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction”. It is only through a principled rejection of the altruist-collectivist premise of the individual’s subordination to the group (i.e., the state), and the embrace of the principle of individualism, i.e., of each person’s right to self-determination and the pursuit of his own happiness free from the forceable interference by others, that our freedom can be saved.
And the counterattack must begin, here and now and in the name of individual rights, with the demand that the SCHIP expansion bill be defeated, and the original program be killed through non-renewal. (As of this writing, different versions have passed Congress and are currently being reconciled in a House-Senate conference committee). The intellectual vacuum can and must be filled by the rise of a principled opposition resting on a foundation of moral certainty, because only a movement armed with the right philosophical ammunition can reverse the disastrous trends currently under way in America.
I will close out this essay with yet another observation from Ayn Rand, a philosopher whose perspective is that of the broad intallectual trends of history spanning centuries. These words were written 46 years ago, and they remain as a warning to anyone who still clings to the illusion that socialist despotism can be averted without a full rejection of its collectivist premise and simultaneous embrace of its ideological opposite, individualism. In these 46 years, we have seen the collapse of American Liberalism, the Conservative Movement which led to the Reagan Revolution, and the rise of the Republican Party to virtual national majority status from 1994-2006. Yet in this period we have seen the size, scope, and intrusiveness of government at all levels expand exponentially, conclusively demonstrating the power of ideas left fundamentally unchallenged by better
ideas.
I quote from For The New Intellectual, page 46;
"If America perishes, it will perish by intellectual default. There is no diabolical conspiracy to destroy it: no conspiracy could be big enough or strong enough...There is no national movement for socialism or dictatorship in America, no 'man on horseback' or popular demagogue, nothing but fumbling compromisers and frightened opportunists. Yet we are moving toward full, totalitarian socialism...moved by nothing but the sluggish inertia of unfocussed minds."
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