Thursday, November 19, 2009

Educating Gabby

"The Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are
willing to work and give to those who would not." Thomas Jefferson

Another quote from Thomas Jefferson to help understand why I am so insensed that Gabrielle Giffords used his words to help justify her support for the giant health care bill that passed the House with the help of her vote.

Should we go further? How about John Locke, Thomas Jefferson's intellectual father in many ways.

"Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common (as the gift
from God) to all men, yet every man has a "property" in his own "person".
This, nobody has any right to but himself. The "labour" of his body and
the "work" of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then,
he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath
mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and
thereby makes it his property...
He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an
oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly
appropriated them to himself. Nobody can deny but the nourishment is
his. I ask, then, when did they begin to be his? When he
digested? or when he ate? or when he boiled? or when he
brought them home? or when he picked them up? And it is plain, if
the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could"
John Locke,
The Second Essay Concerning Civil Government

If this is true, then at what point is a physician's labor his own? At what point does a physician get to determine when and where he spends his time and labors? How can one possibly argue that a government, an insurance company, or anyone else has a right to tell a physician how and when and for what compensation to practice his art, for the furtherance of his own sustenance and profit?

We hear of people talking about the notion that our citizens have a "right" to health care. This is impossible. Because in order to have that right, you also must have the right to tell another person what their wages are, what their hours are, who they can and must do business with, and who they can hire.

Physicians become the slaves of those who have a "right" to their labor.

But it gets worse. You see, I cannot possibly come up with a scheme for all of this, so it falls on the clumsy, brutal, and destructive hands of some sort of government to administer all of this. Physicians now become wards and servants the "the people". Except "the people", to the socialist is really the large and tyrannical centralized government.

Let's move on to Adam Smith, of whom Thomas Jefferson wrote, "In political economy, I think Smith's Wealth of Nations is the best book extant." Just in case Ms. Giffords is confused about where Thomas Jefferson stood on Free Market economics.

Adam Smith broke things down to four laws of economic freedom:

1. Freedom to try.
2. Freedom to buy.
3. Freedom to sell.
4. Freedom to fail.

This health care bill disrupts every one of these laws. Even now, doctors and others are not free to start their own clinics in any way they see fit to provide a competitive product in health care that people may or may not want.

Consumers of health care services (that's you and me), are not free to purchase the services we want at the prices we feel are fair. We cannot use our freedom to make the cost to benefit decisions regarding our very own lives. Our very personal and private health. We are not free to make those decisions even today. This bill makes this situation worse.

Health care providers are not free to sell their wares at prices that enable them to make the kind of living they desire and serve the people they wish.

No one is free to have their ideas fail so that the entire marketplace can learn from their failures.

The free market is the way to solve our problems, not more government.

In Cleon Skousen's "The 5000 Year Leap", he writes;

"The Founding Fathers agreed with Adam Smith that the greatest threat to
economic prosperity is the arbitrary intervention of the government into the
economic affairs of private business and the buying public. Historically,
this has usually involved fixing prices, fixing wages, controlling production,
controlling distribution, granting monopolies, or subsidizing certain
products."


This new health care proposal does all of these things.

In case you don't think that health care should be an "economic prosperity" question, let me readjust your attitude. Everything is economic, because the very act of a single person performing work on what God's Nature has left before us creates an economic event. By applying one's labor to anything, one has created value and has a right to be fairly compensated for that value if one wishes to part with it. A doctor has the most personal and direct economic interest in health care. It very simply is the means by which he feeds his family. He has a right and an obligation to charge as much as he is able to provide for his family. Neither you, nor the Federal Government has any right to dictate his labor or private business in our Constitution, nor by the natural rights of mankind. Only in a socialist state is this right manufactured and forced, unnaturally upon us. And only by destroying the liberties set forth in our Constitution can this bill succeed and survive.

I now return to Thomas Jefferson again, just in case Ms. Giffords is still confused about what he might think about her vote on our current health care proposals in Congress;

"The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to
divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is
competant to (perform best). Let the national government be entrusted with
the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State
governments with the civil rights, laws, police, and administration of what
concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the
counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by
dividing and subdividing these republics, from the great nation on down through
all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man's farm
by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that
all will be done for the best. What has destroyed liberty and the rights
of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun?
The
generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no matter
whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or the aristocrats of a Venetian
senate."
Bergh, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 14:421

Do you hear that Gabrielle? Do you hear that Congress? Mr. President? Probably not.

One has to be ignorant of our Founding Fathers, and the reasons why we have a country at all, or must be a rather cynical and perhaps sinister practitioner of the misdirection and propaganda used by the likes of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini, to quote Thomas Jefferson for the purposes of justifying a vote for a centralized control and intervention into 1/6th of our nation's economy and to intervene in the most sacred and private business of all things; the relationship between a doctor and his/her patient.

And our people are sitting here, ignorant of our own heritage, letting it happen.

As a nation, we are replacing our faith in the sovereignty of God for a faith in the power of the State, a man-made creation, an idol.

"Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory
of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of
birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave
them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be
dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a
lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator
,
who is blessed forever. Amen" Romans 1:22-25


Gabby, you may believe that you are doing the right thing. And I would like to believe that you believe that. But you are dreadfully wrong about economics and you are a socialist. And the natural conclusions of your belief system is a lie and is against God's nature and will destroy my country. I bid you confusion, disarray and failure in your political life and career, and wish you to be sent back home, to the private sector....preferably tomorrow.

2 comments:

  1. I came a cross this on the Giffords website and I was interested in hearing your response:

    http://giffords.house.gov/insurancereform/debunkingmyths/myths-and-facts.shtml

    It seems like to me that the bill is positioned to be as "benign" as possible to get it through the door, but once it is active, it will take on a life of its own. Hopefully, Giffords is not so gullible that she actually thinks this bill will not cost more than expected (does that ever happen?), or that unintentional rationing will happen. Giffords establishes that rationing is not a goal of the bill... no really? Just because it is not a goal, does not mean that it is not inevitable under the implemented policies.

    My thoughts anyway...

    Andy

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  2. My general response is that she is wrong on all counts in her "myths and facts" section regarding HR 3200. She is correct on some of her points that the bill doesn't specifically call for "death panels" or other such calamities, but just because the law doesn't require rationing and mention it by name doesn't mean that rationing isn't what the end result will be. In fact, the bill does mention areas where the "commissioner" will make cost analysis decisions. What does she think that means? A basic understanding of finances and economics leads anyone of sound mind to the same conclusion; either taxes go way up, or services go way down, which is rationing of health care. The problem is that this bill does NOTHING to arrest the rate of growth of health care costs. In addition, there are countless mechanisms for raising money to pay for it (i.e. taxes), and their assumptions for how much money they will save from Medicare to make this "deficit neutral", is right out of a Fantasy Island episode. It simply cannot be done. So...we have more taxes, or rationing of care...or both.

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