DC’s libertarian think-tank (how about dink-tank?) the Cato Institute ran the following full-page ad in today’s Washington Post:
Now, I watched President Obama‘s press conference on health care last night, and I thought he did a fine job of explaining the need for reform in a manner in which a majority of “Real Americans” can understand. (See, I might despise them, but I still think they deserve a shot at being healthy.) Sure, the Prez seemed a bit detatched, if not fatigued, but you try negotiating with a bunch of Blue Dog Dems worried about keeping their seats in mouth-breather districts while simultaneously dealing with international crises and a tanking global economy. By and large, I thought Obama sent all the right messages: a willingness to compromise up to a point, but not at the expense of already-struggling American families.
Cato seems to have tuned out, which is entirely unsurprising.
Lest you think I’m simply engaging in another round of libertarian bashing, know that I regularly read the academic drivel that this so-called “institution” publishes. Trust me when I tell you that they have done nothing to convince me that the libertarian party isn’t about as useful as a full-service resort on the moon.
Like Doctor Cox (who is a real MD, I might add), I also despise Ayn Rand and the cult of personality her glassy-eyed followers call Objectivism. Yet even Rand — with her masochistic, anti-feminist, pro-corporate, laissez-fascist worldview — loathed libertarians. Here’s some cool quotes stolen without permission from some internet shrine to this intellectually poisonous witch:
All kinds of people today call themselves “libertarians,” especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies, except that they’re anarchists instead of collectivists. But of course, anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet they want to combine capitalism and anarchism. That is worse than anything the New Left has proposed. It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology. They sling slogans and try to ride on two bandwagons. They want to be hippies, but don’t want to preach collectivism, because those jobs are already taken. But anarchism is a logical outgrowth of the anti-intellectual side of collectivism. I could deal with a Marxist with a greater chance of reaching some kind of understanding, and with much greater respect. The anarchist is the scum of the intellectual world of the left, which has given them up. So the right picks up another leftist discard. That’s the Libertarian movement.
Libertarians are a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people: they plagiarize my ideas when that fits their purpose, and they denounce me in a more vicious manner than any communist publication, when that fits their purpose. They are lower than any pragmatists, and what they hold against Objectivism is morality. They’d like to have an amoral political program.
They are perhaps the worst political group today, because they can do the most harm to capitalism, by making it disreputable.
Further, their leadership consists of men of every of persuasion, from religious conservatives to anarchists. Moreover, most of them are my enemies: they spend their time denouncing me, while plagiarizing my ideas. Now, I think it’s a bad beginning for an allegedly pro-capitalist party to start by stealing ideas.
And those are the words of the ideological progenitor from whom they “borrowed” their political/economic philosophies!
Having recently driven through the country (well, the American South, anyway), I was struck by the appalling living conditions of so many Americans who have voted against their self interests based on the fairytales told to them by rich white men relentlessly pursuing their own. The deregulatory, laissez-faire approach to governance has hollowed out a once-productive American workforce and provided them with nothing but the teat of intolerance upon which to suckle for dwindling nourishment. There are countless communities in this country with little to show for themselves but liquor stores, baptist churches and gun shops. Fuck, if there was a school for every church, America might have a shot at leadership in the 21st century.
The squalor I saw is NOT a failure of people or personal responsibility — it’s a failure of public policy. This is the true legacy of Ronald Reagan and his impish free-marketeering guru Milton Friedman (whose economic “advice,” I might add, directly led to genocide and permanent poverty in several formerly democratic Latin American countries).
But the libertarians like to pretend that their policies stop at self-governance. Well, if you take away all opportunity and choice except for those lucky enough to be the scions of Titans of Industry (see the Bush clan), who benefits? Certainly not the average freedom-loving American. But save me from Spooky Uncle Sam and his oppressive government-option health insurance!
And so I say to all libertarians, Objectivists and other creatures of fancy: it’s on, motherfuckers.
PS: if you want a truly balanced look at Obama’s health care plan, its strengths, weaknesses and political liabilities, check out this article.
That’s a fairly sorry excuse for a retort, Rich.
Put that tinfoil hat back on — wouldn’t want those government mind rays to penetrate that thick skull…
We Objectivists know all collectivist schemes are bankrupt; it’s only the remenant of free traders hanging on that keeps you afloat. So, once things go as far down the progressivist/socialist/fascist road as we have right now with the half-nationalized medical system, we sort of like it when you people totalize.
We realize it is only the producers “holding on” that keeps you from seeing the hole down to hell.
So go ahead, finish the job. All the sooner the thing will collapse.
Note: one of the “producers” in this scenario are the general practitioner doctors. We have a vast shortgage of them now. It will get worse under fully socialized medicine. And….since specialized care will now be horendously rationed, the ‘more abundant’ specializing doctors will also get squeezed.
How are you going to get doctors for your system?
Finally, a God-honest Objectivist!
Welcome, John (and I mean that sincerely, yet it doesn’t mean I won’t throw the occasional elbow).
Do you have any proof outside of your near-religious conviction that “specialized care will now be horendously rationed” under a gov’t option (or even single-payer) system? Please cite specifics.
I’ve got TONS of other questions, too, but they might involve a battery of psychological data collection protocols.
Oh, and John — are you certain that it’s “collectivist schemes” that are bankrupt and not the aggressive push for global deregulation of the financial sector? Just wondering…
okay, that’s two slur attacks in one (sincere?) response.
Refusing to bite you back….
My specific on rationing, especially with single payer (good luck getting that far this go-round) is: Canada, England, USSR, etc etc etc etc. Even Cuba, the supposed most pure system. Before the revolution Cuba had excellent health care. After, it tanked and the only time it “seemed” to get better was during Soviet subsidy. Currently the ‘street’ way around the atrocious Cuban system is “Sociolismo.” I always think that to be a hilarious term.
Please do not bring up such examples as “Sweden” where their entire socialism is propped up by oil sales and miniscule population.
and “Rationing” is a wimp word for it. Industrial slavery is the correct term.
Yes I am sure.
One imagines Cuba’s problems with regards to economic growth and social sustainability extend far beyond socialized health care and may have something to do with the forced isolation imparted upon it by its closest industrialized neighbor.
For every slight you find about the UK or Canadian system, I can find a dozen ACTUAL citizens of those countries praising mightily their system. They’re proud of it, and for a reason: it means that little kids don’t die of burst appendixes because their parents didn’t take them to the doctor because they didn’t have health insurance. And the beat goes on…
Still, I’m sure that you’d find a way to rationalize the “murder by neglect” that characterizes the for-profit health care system. Just like you’d surely defend the international policies that have inspired relentless (and increasingly dangerous) anti-Americanism in the pursuit of import superiority.
What’s clear, John, is that after nearly three decades of laissez-faire — through which Objectivism merely provides a thin moralistic shield — you’ve created a nation of consumer serfs (how’s THAT for freedom and self-determination?!?) and an ever widening gulf between those who have and those who are ground under the bootheels of multinational pillagers on the relentless march for ever “purer” markets.
Sounds like fascism to me. Well, actually, it kind of sounds like Scientology. But I wouldn’t want to insult you. . .
All myths. Especially that the last three decades have been laissez-faire.
All the rest of what you wrote is either twisted or outright wrong.
But myth debunking would take too much time, right? Better to nihilistically hope for an economic cataclysm that will presage the rule of Objectivist Supermen?
IRT the last three decades having been laissez-faire — I’m aware that no market is ever “pure” enough for your persuasion, and that Nixon’s push for a guaranteed income for Americans can be construed as “socialistic.” Still, we’ve witnessed a steady march, from 1980 on, towards a globalized, deregulated market.
If you would like to counter that assertion, I’m waiting.
It’s going to be interesting, once the USA is reduced to the level of third-world status by the Progressives, to discover how our neighbors fare. Cuba was blocked from interacting with US by law. The rest of the world, however, has had the benefit of our existence as a trading partner. Once we are “reduced” won’t the rest of the world be bascially in the same state Cuba has been in?
If the depressing state of Cuba is a result of not being able to interact with a capitalist, wealthy, productive US, wouldn’t it be logical to believe the rest of the world will fare the same once the US is “gone?”
I have had plenty of Progressives scream when I called them ‘Communists’ because they wanted to enact any number of leftish measures, such as an increase in income taxes for the productive. They always claimed they were not communist and I was totalizing.
Calling the last three decades “laissez-faire” amounts to the same thing in the other direction. However, I am not screaming, just bored.
Trust me, we progressives find your faux-detachment and over-rehearsed “discipline” as tiresome as you find our volatility.
The United States has always had a progressive income tax, which has resulted in any number of infrastructural luxuries you take for granted daily. But it’s probably “communistic” of me to point that out.
Between you and me, Rand’s shallow Absolutism makes a mockery of the noble Promethean Urge. But I clearly can’t help you see anything beyond the black & white, because you’ll think you’re being coerced.
An aside: In a post-modern technological context, Rand’s mistrust of collectivism is out-of-step with our crowdsourced meritocracy. Just sayin’.
The US will never be “gone.” Not while we’ve got superior firepower (something we might be able to agree on?!?). But we will cease to be exceptional when the values of Liberty, Fraternity & Equality (that we borrowed from the French to launch our Revolution) become nothing but empty words to prop up our myopic and xenophobic policies.
Still waiting for some examples to prop up your borrowed arguments.
We don’t need more doctors, we need more Primary Care Nurse Practitioners, our education is less expensive, we’re covered under our supervising physician’s malpractice insurance, therefore we are cheaper to employ (plus, we do a much better job!). We’re slowly gaining recognition and acceptance, Medicare will now reimburse us at 85% of what they would a physician! (sad, but true)…
“Always had” a Progressive Income Tax?
The Constitution expressly forbade the imposition of a direct tax on sovereign citizens. Pesky little item. It took a shameful constitutional amendment 100 years ago to annihilate that protection against confiscation. Since then the Progressive’s counter-Revolution has escalated the expropriation.
The French Revolution fed its idea and slogan to the American? That is so wrong on so many levels, including the dates, I don’t know where to point first.
Even more bored now.
Yeah, a system that not only discourages young people from becoming doctors and says we can get along with just nurses and pays them with coerced other people’s money (medicare taxes and soon Obama-ed taxes), yep that is a fine improvement on the system of medicine that came before, which was once the envy of the world. Give me more of that!
@ casey rae
You said “The United States has always had a progressive income tax, which has resulted in any number of infrastructural luxuries you take for granted daily. But it’s probably “communistic” of me to point that out.”
You are reversing cause and effect here. What was needed before progressive tax could be imposed, were the producers that created the wealth to be taxed.
The reason for progressive taxation was never to provide infrastructure, it is simply a powergrab by contemptible politicians who buy votes from those millions of progressive parasites such as yourself..who prefer to leech on the productive rather than choosing to live as an honorable individuals with enough pride to provide your own keep.
Of course it’s fueled by the hatred and envy of those of your ilk, especially towards those who’re actually capable of cutting it without having to rely on “cradle to grave” vote-bribes from scumbag politicians.
Thanks to Ayn Rand and similar revolutionariesthe well-worn facade of “the greater public good” as used by powerlusting demagogues like Obama has started to disintegrate rapidly..like mist in the morning sun, and even if it takes another couple of decades for the all the producers to finally wisen up to this swindle, it means that progressives like you are going to end up in the poorhouse within your own lifetime, and there will be no one to bail you out…and what a day that will be.
Till then, enjoy the ride. It’s almost over.
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson became the leader of the pro-French Democratic-Republican party that celebrated the republican ideals of the French Revolution. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton led the Federalist Party, which viewed the Revolution with skepticism and sought to preserve existing commercial ties with Great Britain.
Jefferson was the philosophic architect of the American Revolution, which borrows heavily from the fraternalistic and Original Libertarian ideals of France’s many political/mystical lodges. And our respective Revolutions are seperated by a mere decade. It was more difficult for the French Revolutionaries to topple a pervasive, localized government than it was for the Colonies to beat back an overseas fighting force comprised of many soldiers who shared more than a passing interest in this experiment in Liberty, due to their own lodge affiliations. (Not to imply our Revolution was a cakewalk.)
It’s safe to say that many of the Framers (particularly Franklin and Jefferson) had an intimate understanding of the principles that eventually resulted in the 1786 Franco Revolution. The scrappy British subjects merely got there first.
Still bored?
Oh, and how long has it been since our medical system (the whole thing — not just the elective portions for rich folks) has been the envy of the world?
Hilton makes a bit more sense than Donahue, but they both get the concept of progressive taxation all wrong. We should probably ease up or temporarily ban the payroll tax, but the income tax is definitely how fun stuff like the roads you drive on get built.
And while I’m on my harangue, flown in an airplane lately? The “producers” of commercial air travel have never been profitable. The Federal Government has subsidized them (and other Titans of Industry, from steel to automotives) since our country could wear long pants. But God forbid someone try to form a union!
Hilton, unless you’re a scion (in which case, congrats on the auspicious birth), you’re gonna end up in the same poorhouse. At which point you might want the “freedom” to “organize” “collectively.”
Time to grow up, guys.
Hilton, may I ask what you “produce,” since you’re so quick to paint me as someone “fueled by the hatred and envy” of those who, according to you, can “cut it?”
Cuz I’ve been “cutting it” since I left the house at 17. How ’bout yourself?
@casey
Apologies for insulting you and painting you the parasite…but remember you started it with your “Objectivists and other creatures of fancy: it’s on, motherfuckers.” statement.
As for hatred and envy…Ludwig von Mises said it best
” The . . . system of capitalism is such a society in which merit and achievements determine . . . success or failure. … In such a society each member whose ambitions have not been fully satisfied resents the fortune of all those who succeeded better. . . . They sublimate their hatred into a philosophy, the philosophy of anticapitalism, in order to render inaudible the inner voice that tells them that their failure is entirely their own fault. —Ludwig von Mises
As for your “the government having subsidised the steel and other industries for ages” comment…dont you think thats good enough reson to constitutionally get government out of the back pocket of business altogether? A complete seperation of state and economics such as is the case with the seperation of state and church?
Government interference (mixed economy) doesnt just make it easy for businessmen to be bad, but rather impossible to be good.
If government could not use a club to grant some producers special concessions at the expense of others, then powerlusting denagogues could not buy political support from special interest groups.
As for “the freedom to organise collectively when we’re in the poorhouse” implies that you dont understand that coercion is immoral. I it somehow OK to rob someone of his effort simply because many others think so too?
No mate, theft is theft, whether done by a petty criminal or a majority of “progressives”. What gives the bob the right to steal from the producers? Does the term “progressive” magically obliterate the wrongness of it and make theft fashionable
If you’ve been cutting it since 17, why are you fighting on the side of the parasites? Does it make you cool because there are more of them to approve?
IMO, You should grow up Casey
No need for apologies. You argue your points persuasively, which I admire.
Coercion may very well be immoral, but so is limiting choice through the relentless pursuit of profit. Which is why we have no “producers” left in America (cheaper to outsource everything, partly due to the fact that the for-profit health care industry has made it impossible to competitively retain American workers).
I’d say that eviscerating opportunity through free-market fundamentalism and a fairy tale of trickle-down, supply side economics is both coercive AND corrosive.
Take a drive across America sometime and see what I mean.
Oh, and I’ll believe there’s a separation of Church and State once government starts collecting taxes from Rick Warren’s megachurch.
Talk about perverse incentives.
By the way… I’m not sure I’m personally a true collectivist, but I understand the benefits of providing basic securities for citizenry, in order to harness productivity. It’s basic social science. I guess I’m a methodological individualist with nationalistic tendencies. An ex-friend of mind might call it “paternalistic libertarianism,” but as a self-centered iconoclast, I reject the label. 
Lastly (I think), EVERYTHING is a special interest group. You like breathing clean air? There’s an interest group for that. What about defense? Well, obviously. Non-poisonous foodstuffs? You betcha. There’s even several special interest groups dedicated to selling politicians on the non-government ideology you so hold dear. Ironic isn’t it?
@casey
“take a drive through America and see what I mean”
You’re right…the individual freedom your founding fathers intended to preserve in the first ammendment has been so corrupted that individuals barely have any incentive to start pursuing profit.
If you had driven through America during the “golden ages” of your constitutional republic you would have found a bastion bursting with enthusiasm, industry, zeal, inventiveness and optimism.
During this time America rose from a backward little colony to an industrial giant with triple the GDP of the known world, and exactly because the requirements of mans unique nature as a creative creature was unleashed by the guarantees to the pursuit of “life, liberty and happiness”, whereas before mans spirit was hobbled by the savage and brytal rule of the church in cohoots with the king.
You have drunk to deaply from the coolaid chalice of Marx, Engels, Chomsky and that fat ugly fucker of Fahrenheit 911 infamy mate.
What would you prefer?, to wait in neverending ration lines for sunflower sead and rancid potatoes like in the planned economies of Russia, Cuba, Poland, East germany, Angola, Mocambique, Zimbabwe, Post war england and other assorted socialist shitholes puckering the planet?
If I were you I’d join the tea parties to help reastablish the grand original tradition of your once great country, rather than help the moochers drain the lifeblood of the place by selling your freedoms down the river in exchange for free fucking dentures and flueshots.
Now, I watched President Obama’s press conference on health care last night, and I thought he did a fine job of explaining the need for reform in a manner in which a majority of “Real Americans” can understand
==============================
Really. Did he mention one thing about the AMA cartel that has dominated American medicine since the 1880s and extended its control to areas such as medicines, most of which cannot be obtained without an AMA doctor’s prescription? No, thought not, but this is what is causing the “health care crisis.” When you push up demand by subsidizing medical care and have an inelastic supply, due to a cartel, you get skyrocketing prices. This simple supply and demand analysis should be something that a majority of Americans can understand, but it is politically forbidden to mention such an explanation.
And so here we go, collectivizing the medical industry to “solve” the problem of it already being a more than hundred year old cartel – which cartel is, of course, is also maintained by the same laws and government that will be administering the collectivization.
Brillant!!!
@Craig: No argument about the AMA. But aren’t they also those same brilliant scientists of medicine who make our health system the envy of the galaxy?
@Hilton: When private citizens like Don Rumsfeld — whose approach to government was to privatize everything but “core functions” (which went gangbusters in New Orleans and Iraq) owns the majority stock in the company that makes Tamiflu, the problem isn’t breadlines, it’s corpratist oligarchical control of both government AND the so-called “free market.”
I’ll make a deal: we get rid of the stock market, and go back to true producer/consumer value where supply and demand are the only incentives (not shareholder-demands for absurd quarterly profit increases), and THEN we can get rid of government.
Because only a fucking blind, brainwashed tool would miss the fact that corpratists and free-market fundamentalists ALREADY own the government they claim to abhor. I live and work in Washington, and I know what federal agency capture looks like. And it’s not freedom.
@Craig
you can download a great article by Peikoff on how to fight this BS at http://www.aynrand.org/site/DocServer/ARC_Health_Care_Is_Not_A_Right_2009.pdf?docID=2161 and find more intellectual ammo at doctorsonstrike.com
@casey
apologies for the copy&paste, but Edwin Lock said it better than I have time for. Here goes….
How to Achieve Real Campaign Finance Reform
Wednesday, February 13, 2002
By: Edwin A. Locke
By Having A Government That Can’t Sell “Public Interest” Favors
The U. S. House of Representative is again debating campaign finance reform legislation. The proximate cause of this debate being brought to the floor now is the Enron scandal, including the fact that the company gave large amounts of money to politicians from both major parties. The deeper cause is the increasing disgust the American people have come to feel about the unprincipled manner in which our legislative process is conducted. The process, in essence, is that swarms of lobbyists descend like locusts on Washington, demanding special favors in return for campaign contributions. It is claimed that the ultimate culprit in this mess is money (“wealthy special-interest groups”). This claim is false. “Moneyed interests” are only a symptom of a deeper cause. The corruption is caused not by material wealth but by spiritual poverty. It is caused by a bankrupt philosophical premise: the concept of the “public interest.”
Let us see how this premise operates in practice. Imagine that you are an honest, idealistic congressman just elected to office. On your first day, you are accosted by four lobbyists. The first demands a tariff increase on certain imports to “protect” his group’s industry–which, he claims, serves the public. The second lobbyist asserts that it will benefit the public if his group gets a subsidy to help its members survive in a “brutally competitive” market. The third insists that it will help the public if members of his group are given license to be the exclusive providers of a certain service. The fourth says the public will be better off if unions are made illegal in his industry. The next day, a new group of lobbyists asks you for favors. These requests often conflict with those demanded by the first group, but are just as fervently presented as being in the “public interest.”
How then do you decide what to do? If an auto-industry spokesman argues for import tariffs on cars to protect the jobs of hundreds of thousands of workers, and an auto-dealer association argues for no tariffs in order to give hundreds of thousands of buyers lower prices, which group, in this case, is the “public”? Both and neither. You realize that “the public” is not an actual entity but only a collection of individuals. So which individuals, in any given case, should get what they want and at whose expense? There is no way to tell–anyone can claim to be the public on any issue. In dismay you recognize that “the public interest” has no objective meaning. It is empty rhetoric.
Politics abhors a vacuum, and when there are no coherent moral principles to guide action, the void is filled by pressure-group warfare. The winner of any given battle is decided by such arbitrary factors as which group is bigger, richer, better connected (e.g., to the White House), or more attuned to the latest media hype or political tide. In practice, the principle of the “public interest” leads to a political war of all against all in which some individuals are sacrificed for the benefit of others. This mess is known as the “mixed” economy. (There are, of course, some principled lobbyists who seek, not special privileges, but simply the right to be left alone–but their pleas fall on unprincipled ears.)
All this leads to widespread cynicism and demands for “campaign finance reform”–but it cannot work. To think that you can eliminate the cause–philosophical bankruptcy–by limiting its effects–the buying and selling of favors–is to think that you can eradicate mental illness by limiting the number of beds in mental hospitals. Real campaign finance reform requires philosophical reform. We must discard the notion of the “public interest” and replace it with the proper principle: individual rights, which means the freedom of each individual to pursue his own interests as long as he does not coerce or defraud others. This means: replace the mixed economy with real capitalism–no tariffs, no subsidies, no protection from competition, no favors.
How would such a system work in practice? Consider the recent hoopla over steel imports. It is reported that Bush is being pressured by some 50 different groups to either pass or not pass legislation that would put tariffs on steel imports or to ban some imports altogether. Which side will win? No one knows; probably the side that makes the most noise or has the most votes. But all this begging of favors could be eliminated on the spot if Bush simply articulated one simple principle: what buyers and sellers of steel do is none of the government’s business and I will take no part in interfering with the free market. End of lobbying; end of favor-seeking. No lobbyists would bother to show up at the White House or in Congress because no one would have anything to sell.
Only when politicians have no power to offer other men’s property–and their own souls–for sale in the name of the “public interest” will we have true “campaign finance” reform.
Edwin A. Locke, Dean’s Professor Emeritus of Leadership and Motivation at the University of Maryland at College Park
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These people have reason to be frightened!
Once they are forced into our new Single Payer system — and the current abortion they’re advancing is just one more step towards Single Payer — all we have to do is start refusing medical care to those who are politically incorrect. Why should we pay so that these people can wine about taxes and freedom and the rest of that old fashioned nonsense. The individual is irrelevent, it is the collective that counts. If you don’t like the collective, the collective won’t like you. And good riddance.