A Finalized Path to Full, Socialized Medicine in America

Thanks to Conservatives and George W. Bush 
By Richard M. Salsman

Once again American conservatives have struck a lethal blow against freedom, rights and capitalism. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling today, condoning every sordid feature of the 2700-page, rights-violating “ObamaCare” law, ensures that America will move still farther and faster down the path to full, socialized medicine, a path first paved in the 1960s, with Medicare and Medicaid. The lawless ruling was made possible by the vote of Chief Justice John Roberts, an appointee of “compassionate conservative” George W. Bush.

With today’s ruling the U.S. government can do virtually anything it wishes to its citizens – liberty and rights be damned, without limit. Officially in America we now have a totally arbitrary and limitless government. That is, we have a “total government.” In short, we’ve got totalitarian government. As to how much further liberty we may lose in our lifetimes, it’ll depend only on how arbitrary and vicious reigning rulers choose to be, or not. There’s no real Rule of Law any more, only the Rule of Men – and these are mostly ignorant, reckless men.

To confirm this truth, surely it isn’t necessary for us to actually observe Swastikas on leaders’ lapels, or jack-booted thugs in the streets, or smoke spirals emanating from gas ovens. This is surreptitious tyranny, yet tyranny all the same, the kind of “soft despotism” Tocqueville warned of in 1835, a “tyranny of the majority” unique to democracy itself, as it is to every other form of mob rule. America’s Founders, especially the Hamiltonian Federalists, adamantly opposed democracy and vigorously defended a constitutionally-limited federal republic, because the first violated individual rights, while the latter protected them. The Jeffersonians opposed the new Constitution, condoned slavery, championed Rousseau’s “popular will,” and favored democracy; today their progeny can be found among the liberty-crushing Obama zombies.

In the mid-1930s, observing the rise of Hitler and Stalin, novelist Sinclair Lewis said “it can’t happen here.” But we know it can happen in America, and anywhere else people accept evil ideas, like the one claiming that “we are our brother’s keeper,” as Ayn Rand dramatized in her 1936 novel, We the Living. In his prescient 1982 book, The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America, philosopher Leonard Peikoff explained how “it” happened in Weimar Germany, and how similar premises and trends could make “it” happen here too. The size, scope and rights-violations of U.S. government have only spread and intensified since the 1930s, regardless of the party in power. This means that deeper, philosophical-ideological premises predominate.

Today’s majority 5-4 decision was made possible by the vote of conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, an appointee of “compassionate conservative” President George W. Bush – the same president who endorsed the expansion of Medicare in 2003 (with the prescription drug subsidy) – the same man who caused the financial crisis of 2008 and then nationalized major banks – the same man who ballooned the size and scope of America government to the point of making candidate Barack Obama seem like a fiscal disciplinarian.

Neither Mr. Obama nor even “ObamaCare” is primarily responsible for today’s evil result. No one should be surprised to find a dog eating from a garbage can; one should only wonder why a rational human would join it in the act. American conservatives are solely responsible for today’s ruling, just as they helped make possible such previous rights-violating government interventions, whether through Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, public schools, the Federal Reserve, the EPA, the federal income tax, and the anti-trust laws.

In April I published the following column: “Memo to the Supreme Court: Health Care Is Not a Right.” Obviously, the Court didn’t get the memo. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have its number. Knowing how many Justices believed the myth that “health care is a right,” I could easily (but sadly) predict its ruling:

“Both sides [of the oral debate] blithely assume that ‘health care is a right.’ The law itself and many of the Justices also assume it. Thus most everyone in this alleged ‘debate’ is merely quibbling over how much the rights of health care providers will be violated – for that’s what a mythical ‘right to health care’ entails. . . . In fact, health care is not a ‘right’ and doctors, nurses, hospitals, drug-makers, and health insurers are no more ‘servants’ of the masses, or even of those in need of health care, than are businessmen, bankers, teachers, journalists, or truck drivers servants of those who need their services. . . . The Supreme Court, instead of interpreting existing medical mandates (injustices) as a legal ‘justification’ for condoning still more mandates (injustices), should be asking the defenders of ObamaCare for a detailed list of those mandates currently embedded in scores of existing U.S. laws, and then strike them all down at once, as a violation of the 13th Amendment’s prohibition against slavery and involuntary servitude. But don’t hold your breath. This Court, like all those before it over the past century or so, will likely condone the violations of property rights and contract freedom that are rife throughout ObamaCare. The Court long ago stopped protecting economic liberties, on the ground that capitalism was ‘unjust,’ and that democratic mobs had a ‘right’ to mooch and loot whatever they wished from an ‘elite’ and right-less minority. Likewise, today’s Court believes in a ‘right’ to health care, so it’ll likely endorse the ultimate contradiction, the one all statists condone, despite its illogic and immorality – that there’s a ‘right’ to violate others’ rights.”

There isn’t a single prominent American conservative today who only a few years ago wasn’t singing loudly the praises of compassionate conservative George W. Bush and his appointee, John Roberts. Bill Buckley. George Will. Rush Limbaugh. Bill Kristol. David Brooks. Glenn Beck. Shawn Hannity. The whole stinking lot of them. Without the conservatives’ sanction, left-wing-nut-jobs never would have had a chance in a rational America. The conservatives gave them their chances, by repeated compromise on crucial principles. Never have conservatives deserved the label of “liberty-lovers” or “rights respecters,” and quite apart from their penchant for denying such civil liberties as free speech and a woman’s right to control her own body.

After today, if people can’t see conservatives as the real enemy within, as those most helping to destroy liberty, by pretending to be liberty-protectors, while leaving its ramparts unprotected – as they did on 9/11 – they will never see it. When, in time, these people come to feel, directly, the cruel and unusual punishment, the abuse, and the personal indignities that total government will mete out to them, they’ll have deserved their own pain and suffering. To ensure it, perhaps liberty-loving health care providers – doctors, hospitals, drug-makers, insurers – will go on strike.