Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Over the years that I’ve involved myself in politics, there has been one idiotic thing that people say—if you count liberal “progressive” Democrats as people—that fills me with a special amazement and contempt at just how stupid they have let themselves become.

It usually begins, “Out of all the countries in the world, only America …” and what follows will be, not some distinction of which Americans should be rightly proud, but something of which the speaker disapproves. “Only America lets people own as many guns as they wish,” or “Only America refuses to provide free medical service to all its inhabitants.” (I underlined “lets” because, where basic human rights are concerned, especially those that preexist the nation and the Constitution, there is no “lets”. I wrote “inhabitants” because liberal “progressive” Democrats usually have illegal immigrants in mind when they’re giving away free goodies provided, involuntarily, by you and me.)

I’m a great believer in American exceptionalism, the concept that “America is the best idea that anyone ever had for a country”. As a people, we haven’t always measured up to that idea, but most of us have tried. What makes America exceptional isn’t its people, who are pretty much like people everywhere. It isn’t its spectacular geography or its abundant resources, equivalents to which can be found other places in the world. What makes America different is its Bill of Rights, the idea that it’s We The People who allow the government to exist (a proposition that needs to be reexamined now and again), not the other way around, its embrace of individualism and freedom, and its rejection of collectivism and tyranny. Socialist medicine belongs to the latter category and can accomplish nothing but drag America down.

Oddly, I haven’t heard anybody, not even Rand Paul, mention this in the medical context, but the system that liberal “progressive” Democrats threaten to impose on everybody else (while exempting themselves and their Hollywood cronies), whether they call it “single payer” or “National Health” or some other euphemism, is medical communism. This economic “system” is a significant reason why Venezuelans are eating each other’s cats and dogs. It is the reason why North Koreans are said to be eating each other. It is why poor little Charlie Gard was condemned by the Royal Death Panel and had to die as the world’s tiniest political prisoner (It doesn’t matter that he didn’t have much of a chance, the government deprived him of any chance at all.). If that kind of brave new future appeals to you, then go right ahead, push for single payer so that the stunted dolts who run Amtrak and the Post Office can choose who gets to carve on whatever’s inside your skull.

It’s important to understand that, before Obamacare, medicine was far from free in America, but tied down with thousands of bureaucratic rules and regulations imposed by governments and the runaway insurance industry. (The best doctor I ever had quit the practice because some insurance company ordered him to spend no more than fifteen minutes per patient.) Instead of dealing rationally with that mess, they rammed through the Marxist monstrosity we labor under now.

What concerned Americans (or at least the genuine libertarians among them) ought to be fighting for, tooth and nail, is a Constitutional amendment—something that liberal “progressive” Democrats are too evil to undertake, and Republicans are too stupid—mandating complete separation of medicine and state. That would leave the field in the capable hands of the free market system (which has made Americans the wealthiest, most powerful people in the history of humanity), decrease prices by at least two-thirds, accelerate stalled medical progress, and restore the confidentiality that used to exist between doctors and patients. Those who would vociferously oppose it would publicly expose themselves as the inhumane scum they are. The dithering and hesitation of Republicans with regard to this issue have made it clear that they don’t believe in the capitalist system they preach. The only thing liberal “progressive” Democrats believe in is the “duty” of old people to die and get out of the way, as proclaimed by what passes for a futurist among liberal “progressive” Democrats, former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm.

Separation of medicine and state:Accept noi substitute; accept no compromise. This blindingly obvious notion has to be inserted into the national dialog, and the time to insert it is right now: separation of medicine and state. Say in in every conversation you have, in every message you write. Tell radio talk-hosts, newspapers (remember them?) and the politicians. Above all, don’t let the media and the politicians ignore you. It’s the only way we are ever going to settle this matter.

And get on with abolishing taxation, altogether, once and for all.