Someone--Garrison Keillor?--has said that he likes an underconfident person. Me too. During my long career as a student I developed the theory that, in "recitation" or "discussion" sessions, the likelihood that a given person would speak up was inversely proportional to the likelihood that the person had anything insightful to say. What became of all the know-nothing blowhards who, having declined to do any homework, tried to make up for it by dominating the class discussion?
It seems they are showing up at these "townhall meetings" on health care reform. Check out, via Salon's War Room, this one, convened by Rep. Bob Inglis, Republican of South Carolina. Salon's Gabriel Winant's corollary to the principle described above is, "And it seems like the more acute a questioner’s paranoia, the more eager the crowd’s support." He's right. Vaccinations! Revolution! Light bulbs!
But these people are not really any more whacko than many of the bright lights of today's G.O.P.--Sarah Palin, for example, whose contribution to the health care debate I will reproduce in full so as to be immune to the charge of picking low-hanging fruit. The whole thing is manifestly crazy, the polluted output of a mind that cannot be troubled by facts.
Statement on the Current Health Care Debate
As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we’re saying not just no, but hell no!
The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
Health care by definition involves life and death decisions. Human rights and human dignity must be at the center of any health care discussion.
Rep. Michele Bachmann highlighted the Orwellian thinking of the president’s health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the White House chief of staff, in a floor speech to the House of Representatives. I commend her for being a voice for the most precious members of our society, our children and our seniors.
We must step up and engage in this most crucial debate. Nationalizing our health care system is a point of no return for government interference in the lives of its citizens. If we go down this path, there will be no turning back. Ronald Reagan once wrote, “Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” Let’s stop and think and make our voices heard before it’s too late.
- Sarah Palin
Take a shower, then for antidotes go here, and here, and here.
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