Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Pay no Attention to the Issue Behind the Curtain

The current healthcare debate was never actually about healthcare.

The town hall protests aren’t about Healthcare. They started long before the current plans were presented in Congress. As they did for Cap-and-@#$% and The Stimulus, Congress and the present administration have pressed plans, with a ironic urgency, that would not take effect until 2013. “This bill must pass THIS WEEK or we’re all doomed!” they say, even though they’re not obligated to actually DO anything for years. Don’t even investigate what the plan actually is, trust the few bureaucrats who wrote it when they say, “it should work.”

When confronted about the only plan that’s printed for the public, they’ve said “no the plan doesn’t say that,” referring to some other proposal that the public has no access to. But we should support this other plan anyway despite the fact that it does not exist in any concrete form. They ram through thousands of pages of regulations without a glance.

This is not democracy. This is a rubbers-stamp assembly, common in brutal dictatorships.

How did we come dangerously close to this? Even assuming best intentions, these plans are dubious. Certain people see a problem and, not trusting anyone else to fix it they way they think it should be fixed, insist on power to fix it themselves. Rare is the man who gives up this power once his “objective” is achieved(*pines for George Washington*). They imagine what other sorts of “good” they can do when they still have this power, or bargain it for some other “good” achieved, continually moving the proverbial goal-posts. More often, This approach is adopted by those less well-intentioned to gain power.

Even the well meaning fall prey to what I call Lord Acton’s Law: “Corruption is directly proportional to the amount of power concentrated.” The more power these few bureaucrats consolidate to “fix” things, the more likely they are to become corrupted and corrupt. Whether making bargains to get power or doing personal favors with it, corruption is inevitable even if well-intended.

Powerful do-gooders claim to bestow “rights” while interfering in natural rights. To quote Malcom Reynolds, “Don’t have to [win]. Just want to go my own way.” This is a natural right; one that government can only maintain by non-interference. Life, the “Pursuit of Happiness,” and the Liberty to maintain them. Government protects these by preventing interference by others, not by interfering itself. The bestowed “right” to health care is direct interference with the natural right to private property in the form of accumulated wealth.

All that with the well-intended ones.

This debate is about power. There are other reform plans out there, but knowledge of them is stifled. Knowledge is power, and that power is not compatible with those who now push these plans. Their denunciation of the TEA Parties and oposition pundits like Glenn Beck via advertisers is enough evidence that their intentions are not the best, so what will happen when Acton’s LAw is applied to them?