America After the Change

Interesting article from Victor Davis Hanson who returns from a Europe with some sobering observations on socialism, health care, and the path Obama and the Democrats are leading us down.

Excerpts, on his multiple first-hand experiences in European and Middle Eastern hospitals:

Because I have traveled a great deal in my life, often recklessly so, alone, and to weird places in search of answers to topographical questions of the ancient Mediterranean world, and first-hand observations about battles and campaigns in out of the way places for several books -- I have ended up over the last 36 years in a number of socialist hospitals.

In each case, the care was terrible. A sole lonely doctor or maverick nurse in two cases saved my life, but on the average the facilities were filthy, and the employees akin to those in the government-run post office or bank. And a strange thing occurred as well: often the staff became mad at the patient: "Why did you come here with an appendix problem?"; "You should have not let your strep get out of control!"; "If you don’t drink water, what do you expect!"; "See what happens when you don't take all your quinine pills!".

Socialism will always blame the patient (just watch when it comes here), I suppose for drawing on collective resources, and to focus on public enemies whose weight, smoking, or lifestyle have betrayed the public ideal. Fat people, and smokers (except our President) will soon become as hated in the socialist mind as jet skis, those in their 80s who want a bypass, Yukons, Tahoes and investment bankers.

Also he comments on the nature of those most zealously advocating that America needs to change:

Socialism surely does not make one happier, or content knowing that the resulting society is somehow more humane or caring. Instead each faction is constantly on the verge of striking against the public good. There are always the bad "them", easy-target public enemies among the rich and aristocratic who need to give away more to the "deserving." The bank workers are in perpetual war against the garbage cleaners who hate the social service workers who whine about the fire and police -- each convinced the public must grant more largess on themselves than on like others.

I've never met a beatific equality-of-result person. They are usually grim and angry warriors determined to right cosmic wrongs, eager to demonize those who 'have too much', convinced that the divine ends justify the demonic means.

It is no surprise that Obama invokes the constant bogeymen who do all sorts of terrible things, among them most prominently the Orwellian Goldstein figure of George W. Bush. There are no legitimate critics, only those Obama & Co. claim are shills for the insurance industries, who unfairly attack the Canadian health system, the greedy who go to Vegas and the Super bowl, the Neanderthal who cling to their guns, the dissidents known as Nazis, stooges, mobs, and the well-dressed who dare to become rude to the Congresspeople.

The road to socialism is not natural. It must be paved with the hard work of class envy, demonization of the successful, and obfuscation that each new massive spending program that will raise both taxes and deficits (that's the point, after all, to create so much red ink that we must raise taxes and redefine what constitutes income) must be passed immediately, without delay, now-or-never to stave off Biblical hunger, plague, and flood. Or else!

And to think we've handed exclusive control of our Federal government to these people over the past 4 years.

Anything in that Obama Health Care plan about massive subsidies and generous time off work provisions to treat depression? At this point, that might be the one silver lining that could get me on board.