spotting evil

Consider battlefields in Iraq or Afghanistan.  US troops are bound by rules that protect civilian populations.  Unlike our enemies who target civilians, we go out of our way to avoid them.  As a result, sometimes our opponents fire on us from the cover of residences and mosques -- places where we cannot return fire.

A gunman takes a hostage -- why?  Because he knows that law enforcement exists not to stop gunmen, but in order to protect hostages.  When cops are willing to shoot innocents in order to stop criminals, it's time to rethink cops.

When good faces off with evil, you'll know who's who by watching how each side treats the battlefield.  This goes all the way back to Solomon and the baby.

I want you to think about healthcare.  We have some real problems:  Bizarre incentives that have led to runaway costs.  Rescission.  An employer stranglehold over workers' healthcare.  Overuse in the form of care prescribed to protect doctors from lawyers, rather than protecting patients from illness.  Arbitrary requirements to carry coverage for other people's expensive risks.

The truth is that every one of those issues could be addressed -- right now, and in a bipartisan fashion -- without a single-payer system, a mandate, or any other form of "universal healthcare."  It wouldn't even take a single massive "reform" bill -- just a few simple bills, mostly repealing existing regulation.

But the left has settled on universal healthcare.  The "public option."  No other reform is acceptable.  No other reform will be permitted.  Nothing can actually be fixed if it will lower the number of people who might benefit from a universal system, or if it will reduce national dissatisfaction with market-based care.

Watch how the left treats the battlefield.  They are not interested in solving the real problems -- problems they themselves created, problems they themselves perpetuate.  Problems they could solve today.  No, the left does not care about the problems.  What they want is a particular solution.

The innocents on the battlefield do not matter to liberals.  They are expendable.  Hostages. 

Liberals are willing to split the baby.

Comments

[ConservativeLibertine]

It's true. It's about government control, not about helping anybody!

when you crunch the numbers it turns out that we are looking at a major government take over of health care in the name of helping 4% of the population. The Obama administration and the left wing of the democratic party has determined that changing everyone's heath care to help 4% of the U.S. population is the right thing to do. We need to risk government rationing of health care to help 4%. We need to risk the government controlling our lives in the name of health care cost reduction so that we can help 4% of the population.

This is not a cost benefit proposal; It's a takeover!

http://conservativelibertine.blogspot.com/2009/09/obamacare-crunching-numbers.html

http://conservativelibertine.blogspot.com/2009/09/obama-predicts-economic-disaster-in.html

[TQ]

It's not clear that the proposed plans will even help that 4%. The CBO analysis says that some large percentage of the uninsured will remain uninsured under the various plans Congress has submitted. Part of this is because the laws are so byzantine that even if the intent was to cover everyone, they wind up not covering everyone because they don't even know what's in the bill.

Of course the goal isn't really to help anyone. I'm not even sure if the goal is a complete takeover. Again, the bills are so bizarre and nonsensical it doesn't really result in a takeover so much as a complete disaster. I think the purpose, as is the purpose of most legislation, is to make things such a mess that we need to keep Congress around to "fix" the mess they made previously. Most problems in health care and every other arena could be fixed by just getting rid of laws. But once laws are gone and things run smoothly, there's not really much point in paying some idiot and his staff tons of money to sit around in Washington. So they don't care so much about helping the 4% as they do mucking things up so badly for the other 96% that we become dependent on them to muck things up even more.

Sadly for them, they've mucked it up so bad that the economic reality of runaway money printing is soon going to come and bite them (and all of us) in the behind. And given that the current plan to get us out of the economic mess is to tax and regulate even more, the gulf between reality and their fantasy budgets grows exponentially each day. The unfortunate part is the rest of us have to live through yet another history lesson in why socialism and statism does not work. I mean you'd think that you could only jump off a building so many times before you accept that gravity exists...