Not a good bargain

The notion that the IRS should be able to seize your assets if you don’t arrange your health care to the approval of the federal government represents the de facto nationalization of your body, which is about as primal an assault on individual liberty as one could devise.

Mark Steyn

That captures the core issue here—and my most basic philosophical reason for opposing ObamaPelosiCare—about as well as can be done. Though Benjamin Franklin comes close:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Posted in Medicine, Politics, Quotes.

2 Comments

  1. Apart from what I think of the details of "ObamaPelosiCare"…

    I've seen the same first argument made against abortion laws or, less explosively, anti-suicide laws, among other things, for a long time now. Like it or not, the government already owns your body in a number of important ways. I can't help but think that most of this current noise is arising because it is Obama who is nationalizing your body rather than the many times that Republicans have argued in favor of nationalizing your body (or, also commonly, nationalizing/supporting assaults on your body without the chance for recourse).

    I also think that the Ben Franklin quote is a solid indictment of almost everything the Republican party has enthusiastically supported for the last ten years (as well as the Democratic cowards who sold out to them so as not to appear "soft" on terrorism – that is, they became almost universally "soft" on human rights and liberty). In fact, I think it applies much more directly to the "war on terror" than it does to health care reform. But of course, that is my soap-box, whereas "ObamaPelosiCare" is yours.

  2. W/R/T your second point, if you define the actions taken by the Bush 43 administration as infringing on essential liberties, then absolutely. W/R/T your first, if you define an unborn baby as not human, then absolutely. And as for suicide, the laws against that are theological in their foundation–from a biblical point of view, we do not have the right to kill ourselves, and thus such an act cannot be an essential liberty. (Ditto, on that basis, abortion and many other things.) Remove that foundation, and I don't see any warrant for such laws.

    All of which is to say, your argument assumes your definitions; the true argument has to happen at that level.

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