Saturday, November 07, 2009

Andrew Napolitano on the Health Care Boondoggle

Judge Andrew Napolitano (probably the only commentator working with Fox News worthy of a hearing) in commenting on the health care bill, soon to be yet another unconstitutional "law", in a recent article as follows:

"We do not have two political parties in this country, America. We have one party; called the Big Government Party. The Republican wing likes deficits, war, and assaults on civil liberties. The Democratic wing likes wealth transfer, taxes, and assaults on commercial liberties.

Both parties like power; and neither is interested in your freedoms. Think about it. Government is the negation of freedom. Freedom is your power and ability to follow your own free will and your own conscience. The government wants you to follow the will of some faceless bureaucrat."

I thought the line in bold to be an excellent description of the relationship between government and individual liberty. It could be likened to light and darkness, darkness (government) being by its nature the absence of light (freedom). Government is an exercise in pure consumption and legalized plunder, government does not make things what it has it has by theft from those who are producers.

The only reason why this parasitic relationship continues as an accepted relationship is that we have been trained to believe that government is a sort of god. This idol makes the sun to shine, the grass grow, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, prospers us all, keeps us save from the hordes of infidels by mercilessly bombing third world countries, and in general keeps us safe from ourselves. Like all idols government demands sacrifice, through your giving what is yours through honest labor or even your firstborn through conscription.

It bothered me under the reign of Bush the lesser to hear people constantly defend the indefensible even to this day believing there really were WMD's in Iraq, and the liberal media covered this up. The "Terrorists are gonna get us if we don't do X!" line was tirelessly invoked to assuage the inklings of concern over the freedom destroying policies like the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, warrantless wiretapping, and torture. You know what, it worked, Americans on the right accepted these policies and continue to by and large although they now have reservations as a man with a (D) next to his name now has these insidious tools at his disposal.

It is no less troubling to see Barack H Obama (peace be upon him) picking up the ball right where Bush left off and running with it. This time the card incessantly invoked is one of tolerance and compassion for the disenfranchised. This is how the hate crimes law was passed (attached to a military funding bill gaining bipartisan coverage at the cost of lives in the countries the government ruling us chooses to bomb) as well as the now Health Care "reform" bill. If you have a problem with these government power grabs at the expense of individual liberty you must be insensitive or in the worst case an outright racist/bigot.

It is a shame that people can not see through these sorts of games, it is rather simple, you divide people into artificial groups of race, gender, socio-economic class, and party affiliation, get them all fighting with each other, meanwhile, the plunderers sit up top continuing their pillage and metastasizing into a grotesque size.

With this formula, people will insist that their group is constantly being cheated, create lobby groups to strip their enemy group of money or freedom (often under the guise of "rights" for their group) to right the wrongs done to said group, this is a wish the government is more than happy to acquiesce to as they are in the business of sanctioning theft, and managing the lives of individuals.

What I just said may go right over people's heads caught up in these artificial fights which are created for us to supply us with our outlet of political action. However, the formula Napolitano lays out is simple and clear cut, government by its very nature is the negation of freedom.

2 comments:

Ubersehen said...

I'd be curious, then, to hear exactly what, if any, form of government you advocate. Certainly you wouldn't be for pure anarchy, but then that would require government of some sort... so what would that look like?

Also, completely apart from Obama's policies, why persist in the little ad hominem jabs using his Arabic name? I hope that whatever grounds you have to disagree with his performance must be sufficient to stand on their own without trying to liken him to an Islamic prophet or terrorist, which it is agonizingly clear he is not.

R.S. Ladwig said...

Uber, you are right since we live in a fallen world and man by nature is prone to avarice and thirst for power I would not advocate for anarchy. I would seek to have a minimalist form of government, a government big enough to defend us from tangible foreign threats (not the imaginary ones they constantly cook up and even create in the name of spreading "freedom/democracy") but that government is also small enough that if it begins to behave in a despotic fashion the citizens can choke it.

I agree with the founders of this country that the government which governs best governs least. Government needs to get away from legislating morality and should only prosecute real crimes (crimes against persons and property). Seatbelt tickets, failure to have a plumbing liscence (or other liscences), using drugs etc simply fail to meet that simple common law criteria, thus, such laws (and there are inumerable of them now) are in reality not seeking the well being of individuals but rather control of individuals and revenue extraction (which would be unnecessary if we had a limited government.

On monetary policy I don't necessarily hold to a gold standard but I think it is a good way to prevent runaway inflation (which the US is about to feel heavily). The most significant reform I see in the area of monetray policy would be the ending of the Federal Reserve system, or central banking. People never stop to ask themselves if govenment has the power to make its own money why do they give that power to privately owned central banks. I would submit that it is because the bankers are the shadow government.

On foreign plolicy I would advocate the notion of the founders of a humble foreign policy of non-interventionism, this is not isolationism, but rather the commitment to not interfere in the affairs of other nations beyond trade.

I believe in the rule of law, and the democratic process, this results in a constitutional republic, the constitution restraining government and the people consenting to be governed. This way if 51% are morons they can not overide the desire of the 49% to be free.
That's a rough outline of what I would see to be the most liberty protecting form of government. This makes me a libertarian, as I believe the most virtuous government to be that which seeks the liberty of those consenting to be governed, or more crudely, a government that stays out of our lives and lets us use our God given talents how we see fit.

As formy remarks about the blessed one Barack H Obama, I use the flowery prophet language really not as a jab at his alleged Muslim roots or his Arabic name, rather it is more a jab at the idolatrous cult that has deified this man like a Roman emperor. This is the cult of the emperor 2.0 which will be an upcoming blog post's title.