Kiss Your Freedom Goodbye

The Demoncrats made it clear to the American people recently in their “debates” what their political agenda is. But most Americans, I suspect, only comprehend that agenda in a prima facie sense. The deeper meaning of their agenda is something they desperately don’t want anyone to understand. They are counting on our superficial reaction to their talking points, which amount to a grand parade of euphemisms, demagoguery, and blatant prevarications—all sugar-coated with noble terminology and the pretense of moral sincerity.

We could cite examples from a litany of their talking points. But all we have to do is examine their posture on healthcare and we will get the picture as clear as day.

The majority of the candidates for the Democrat primaries advocate universal (single-payer) healthcare. Many of the prominent candidates want to ban private insurance, and any semblance of self-payment will most likely evaporate with it. Single-payer healthcare is essentially the idea that the government will pay everyone’s medical bills from now until the apocalypse (which will come sooner than later if they get elected). One candidate actually said the government “owes” the American people free healthcare. Others are calling for “Medicare for all” which is almost indistinguishable from single-payer. The bottom line is that healthcare is supposedly a right, and on that they all seem to agree wholeheartedly. 

The problems with this agenda are legion, but we will cover just one obvious one and then a not-so-obvious one. The obvious problem is that it’s beyond idiotic to call healthcare a “right.” Apparently they are calling it that because all Americans need it and it is not optional. Conservatives and other people who still have a functioning brain have a hard time holding back the laughter when they hear this absurd claim. Yet the Democratic Party candidates are actually able to say it with a straight face. On that accomplishment they are to be congratulated. Perhaps their inability to comprehend its abject stupidity is what enables them to pull it off.

If healthcare is a “right” the government is obligated to protect, then as Rand Paul has pointed out, the providers of medical care are equally obligated to provide it without getting paid. No one pays for their rights, and you don’t get paid for dispensing them. I understood that when I was in grade school. (I’m trying to think of the term that describes people who are forced to work without getting paid. Maybe it will come to me later.) But apparently this simple point is lost on the intellectually vacuous Democrat candidates. I wouldn’t want to shatter their fragile emotional chassis by asking the following question: if healthcare is a “right” simply because people need it, why isn’t food a right as well? How about transportation? People need that too. According to the Democrat line of “thinking,” the government will eventually have to feed everyone in the country (and probably beyond to avoid discrimination) on their own dime in addition to giving everyone a free car since transportation is also a need and therefore a right. It won’t be long before every need human beings have will suddenly become rights. Housing, gas, office supplies, you name it—the list is almost endless.

But the not-so-obvious problem with free healthcare is as evil as it is elusive. It can be summarized in a basic universal principle: The minute the government pays for your healthcare, you have become the property of the state. Who do you think will decide what treatments you need and don’t need if they are paying the bill? If you think you will, think again. Have you ever heard of Charlie Gard? He was an infant in the UK who needed drastic life-saving medical treatment for mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. His parents wanted to transport young Charlie overseas in the desperate hope superior capitalism-generated medical technology could save him. But the single-payer UK government denied his parents permission to do so. This proves the point with unmistakable clarity: under single-payer the state shall decide what treatment you are allowed to receive—not you and not your parents (if you are underage). If you are an infant, you belong to the state, not to your parents. If you are an adult, you belong to the state, not to yourself. All this is because the state is paying for your care, and therefore makes all the decisions for you. You are no longer in control of your own destiny. The state is, and there’s nothing you can do about it. 

There are two critical lessons to be learned from these observations. First, based on this political ideology and agenda, the government can and should be given virtually unlimited power over the people. Never mind that the Constitution does not grant the federal government the power to take over individual healthcare or to become the nation’s financial wet-nurse. At any rate, that’s what happens when you surrender the purse-strings of the economy and healthcare to the state. They obtain absolute power, which is what the Democrats have wanted all along. The academic political term for this is “totalitarianism.” The form of government where this agenda thrives is called a “dictatorship.” Who would have thought that the innocent little idea of government-funded healthcare would take us to that place? The government, being abundantly wise and compassionate, just wants to take care of us, right? What could go wrong? Don’t they know what’s good for us better than we do? They think so.

The second lesson is that when the government wields absolute power like this, individual freedom is obliterated. All power goes to the state. All freedom goes down the drain. The condition in which people no longer have any freedom is called “slavery.” (I knew it would come to me.) It’s quite humorous that the Democratic Party is calling for reparations for the evil of historic slavery, while at the same time they are calling for the government to be given absolute power over the people through their healthcare strategy and therefore calling for the people to be transformed into nothing less than slaves.

I’m reminded of the official slogan of the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength. Nowhere is this more clearly expressed than in the current agenda of the radical left-wing Democratic Party. But we may get to the point where the word “Democratic” will become superfluous and can be dropped from that title altogether. If they regain hegemony in the upcoming elections, and if they get their way on healthcare alone, the probability is high we can kiss our freedom goodbye. At that point we may as well just call them “The Party.”