Thursday, April 1, 2010

Beyond Fascist ObamaCare

What famous politician said the following memorable sound bite:

Tutto nello ObamaCaro, niente al di fuori dello ObamaCaro, nulla contro lo ObamaCaro.

I'm not sure how ObamaCare translates into Italian, but here's my translation into English:

Everything in ObamaCare, nothing outside ObamaCare, nothing against ObamaCare.

Well it wasn't Benito Mussolini and it wasn't Barack Obama. In fact nobody said it. Except me.

I am saying it to make a point. The point is that ObamaCare is fascism. With ObamaCare everyone is brought into the orbit of the government's health care plan. You may not be interested in the government's health plan, but the government's health plan is interested in you.

Everyone in the US is going to have to conform to the dictates of ObamaCare. Nobody is going to be able to get outside ObamaCare.

And nobody is going to be allowed to be against ObamaCare. That was the whole point of the Democratic leaders' march across the street to the Capitol on the day that ObamaCare passed.

Let's talk about liberals and fascism.

Our liberal friends have been rather quiet about Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, a 400 page tome in which Jonah makes the inconvenient point that while liberals may not be Fascists, their politics and their governing philosophy is fascist. Liberals always want a comprehensive and mandatory government program for everything that they care about. And they always put themselves in charge of the governing apparatus charged to administer the program.

Jonah points out that, if you take out the sharp uniforms and the marching and the secret police, liberal politics is indistinguishable from fascist politics. That's why he put the manifesto of the National Socialist German Workers Party in an appendix at the end of his book. He wanted his readers to see how close liberal platform comes to an actual fascist manifesto.

But we conservatives want something different. We do not want unity; we do not want government-enforced conformity. We want limited government, limited political power to give space for something more than the state. We are delighted that liberals should choose, for instance, a collective form of health care provision in the State of Washington with Group Health Cooperative. Wonderful idea. Go for it liberals. We just don't like it when liberals force everyone else into a Group Health Cooperative. Because when the government runs it and forces everyone in, it's not a group and it's not cooperative. It is simply government force, another instance of the liberal culture of compulsion.

Michael Barone just put out a piece in which he presents the current political situation in stark terms.

Over the past 14 months, our political debate has been transformed into an argument between the heirs of two fundamental schools of political thought, the Founders and the Progressives. The Founders stood for the expansion of liberty and the Progressives for the expansion of government.

Tea Partiers take the side of the Founders. They believe in liberty. The Educated Class takes the side of the Progressives. They take the side of government.

Not coincidentally, the 20th century, the century of the Progressive movement, was also the century of fascism. Fascism and Progressivism come from the same mold. They both believe in the supremacy of government and top-down administration.

The United States was founded upon a different idea, and the next months will determine whether that idea still flourishes in the hearts and minds of its citizens as it did in the mind of Abraham Lincoln.

We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth... The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.

The way begins with the repeal of the fascist ObamaCare and the introduction of true health care reform that is as large-minded and practical and generous as the American people themselves.

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