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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2007-09-18

Democratic Pathologies, part II 

Refusal to Learn The Lessons of the Past and of Others

Apparently, being "progressive" means not just freedom from history--it requires ignorance of it.

Tommorow, Hillary will roll out her health care proposal. It will include an individual mandate for health insurance, and an option for a pool of resources for a public program. This, in spite of her own abject failures of 14 years ago. This, in spite of the abject failures of the Canadian centralized health care program. This, in spite of the abject failures of British centralized health care, which are so bad as to require the country to open itself up to potential terrorists to keep the system afloat.

Oh, and by the way, it's not just Hillary. Colorado will soon be getting its own proposal from the "blue-ribbon commission," which will also include some elements of single-payer. Note, with some incredulity, that the Lewin analysis says the Colorado Health Services Single Payer Program will be the only one to cut on costs AND provide universal health care. But, of course, that analysis is based on some of the same assumptions that gave us Referendum C costing only $3 billion (that number is now $5.7 billion), and Ritter Property Tax Grab only being worth $48 million (that number has climbed now to $114 million).

By the way, if the Ritter Care proposal and the Hillary Care proposal go into effect at the same time, will we get hit twice for "universal" health care?

But, of course, its not just in socializing American society that the Democrats show their wilful ignorance of precedent.

Just look at the treatment Gen Petraeus received last week: MoveOn.org effectively called him a traitor, and Hillary Clinton effectively called him a liar. But I thought we all "supported the troops." We don't want to revisit the treatment our soldiers got on returning from Vietnam. Nah, we'll just save that treatment for the generals who have earned their stars from years and years of service and sacrifice. We'll let them stand in as proxies for the whole military, because they're easier targets--they have to come to The Hill.

And now word comes that Senator Salazar is considering cutting off the funding for our troops in the middle of the war.

No, we don't want to repeat Vietnam--WE WANT TO RELIVE IT AGAIN IN OUR OWN TIME! Consequences? What consequences? After Vietnam, a million or more died in the Killing Fields, and hundreds of thousands of made "boat people" a household term; the Soviets were emboldened to continue their expansions into central Europe, Africa and South America, while America crawled forward to the Carter Era, which brought us universal scorn for our weakness.

BUT that won't happen this time. No, really.

Which all squares pretty nicely with the label "Progressive." It is now their assumption that by labeling themselves that, the liberals will be able to pied-piper-like lead the masses towards a new, better day that has no resemblance to the past.

Or, unfortunately, to reality.

And I don't even need to get started on the Liberal refusal to tether their policy ideas to the framework of the Constitution--that would be "reactionary" and "neanderthal."

The point is, the Progressive mind MUST uncouple itself from history to be able to imagine the utopia awaiting those who simply believe. Unfortunately, that willingness to disengage from those more violent aspects of the world who do not subscribe to their ideology leaves the rest of us extremely vulnerable. And that's dangerous.

Naivete is charming in a child; it is suicidal in a government.

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Posted by: Michael / 9/18/2007 12:05:00 AM

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