In his latest column, Cal Thomas takes another swing at explaining the perils of health care. Last week, you might remember, he claimed that health care proponents want to kill off the old because we're evolutionists. This week, we're Hitler:
Anyone wishing to revise America's medical system and model it after the systems in Britain and Canada ought to thoroughly examine how those health care systems function before plunging into the same pool. A reasonable conclusion is that these systems require long waits and treatments (if you can get them) that are inferior to what's available in the United States, based on government "guidelines" that frequently approve care only if the patient is deemed "worthy of the investment."As a symbol, Adolf Hitler has been overused, but the philosophy behind the horrors he unleashed can be found in the beliefs of some of those who would use the power of the state to determine who gets help and who doesn't.
The 1933 Sterilization Law was one of Hitler's first acts after taking power. Called the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, it required compulsory sterilizations for those deemed by the state to be "racially unsound," including people with disabilities.
In a posting on the Huntington's disease Web site, Phil Hardt, who along with his wife visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington to study the Third Reich's view of medicine and the sick, reached this conclusion: "Perhaps when you reduce a human being to nothing more than an 'element,' they somehow become easier to abuse and later kill."
As with a journey, so it is with inhumanity: Both begin with a single step.
It's obvious, really. If you believe that health care is a commodity that people are only entitled to if they can afford to pay for it, and that the poor have only themselves to blame if they get sick and die from preventable and treatable illnesses, you're Marie Antoinette on the side of the angels. If, on the other hand, you believe that health care is a right that should be extended to everyone, because all human beings are - no matter how much they earn - unique, valuable individuals, you are looking to reduce human beings to elements, and risk becoming Hitler.
Any questions?
- Log in to post comments
Any questions?
Yeah. Does the procedure required to make that kind of argument appeal require the removal of a lot of grey matter, or just a little bit?
'Cause I figure I could make a killing writing that kind of crap, but my brain keeps protesting - yelling at me about 'truth' and 'ethics'.
Cal Thomas has been a habitual liar and shill for extremists his entire career. Distressing as this may be, his current comments are perfectly in line with his previous work.
Dang, there's always another Liberal Fascism joke.
So apparently, the British and Canadian health care systems are the Sterilization Law of Liberal Fascism.
And "let the poor eat cake" is the American Dream of Liberal Fascism.
Of course, one benefit of the USA is that they'd never sterilise people for eugenic reasons. That why the US never had a case like Buck vs Bell, which happened in another USA.
I been listening to (people who describe themselves as) conservatives and (people who describe themselves as) liberals, on the socialized health care debate, and in some ways itâs funny for someone like me to watch (whose neither a âconservativeâ or a âliberalâ, by the common US definitions of the word).
Many many of these people (but, of course, not all these people) on both âsidesâ really donât understand what âthe other sideâsâ position or beliefs really are. A lot of the stuff I read, with respect to âthe other sideâ from liberals and conservatives are Ad Hominem fallacies and Straw Man fallacies.
In other ways watching all this is kind of sad because the ratio of signal-to-noise goes way up in favor of noise. I keep on seeing Ad Hominem fallacies or Straw Man fallacies from both sides.
Here's the argument people are trying to make when referring to the Nazis (without actually referring to the Nazis)...
http://reiver.tumblr.com/post/165802542/an-other-argument-against-socia…
Perhaps making this same argument, without referring to the Nazis, will make it clearer what people are trying to say, and not generate an emotional reaction. And perhaps generate a cogent rebuttal from fans of socialize health care.
Obama qualifications to reform health care:
No birth certificate
Cannot stop smoking
Difficulty telling the truth.
Narcissistic personality disorder.
Therefore, I Igor produce Obama Birth Certificate at www.igormarxo.org
Compare Obama Care vs Igor Care at Obama vs Igor Care
Damn - does Orac know about this? The Hitler Zombie has made another appearance...
I have always found Cal Thomas to be a useful bellwether for my own opinions. Whenever I'm undecided on an issue, reading Cal instantly crystallizes my opinion in the opposite direction. He rivals ex-president GW Bush and resurgent pundit Rush Limbaugh in the ability to be consistently wrong and never unsure. With regard to health care reform, you have to admit that anything that Cal, Jim DeMint and Sarah Palin oppose deserves, at the very least, some serious consideration.
Charles:
You know, we refute the argument that Thomas actually makes, rather than the argument that you think he could have made. That is not an emotional reaction, it's just the right thing to do.
The thing I can't quite get over is how the American right draws "reasonable conclusions" about how the British and Canadian health care systems must work, instead of looking at how they actually work in reality.
It's possible that these systems have longer wait times than those a well-insured American would experience, or that the treatment quality is lower, but it is not demonstrated simply by calling it a "reasonable conclusion" (and anyway, it all leaves aside completely the millions of uninsured or underinsured Americans).
And to the best of my knowledge, the "reasonable conclusion" that access to care depends on a person's "value to the state" is so utterly false that it's difficult not to see it as projection - given that the underlying premise of American conservatism seems to be that your wealth is an accurate measure of your value as an individual.
Being a Canuck I don't recognize this health care system that some Americans say we have. What they've said and what we have are two separate things. Would it hurt them to do a little fact checking once in a while? [hmm, maybe it would hurt them and they don't trust their health insurance to cover the injury...] ;)
Yesterday by the post office there were some Lyndon Larouche minions with signs about Obama the Nazi. Googling around a little, I get the idea that Larouche is the primary source of the Obama as Nazi mantra. I had thought Larouche was an historical figure, but he seems to be alive and kicking. I did appreciate that the sign holders idented themselves as Larouche supporters, rather than posing as mainstream Americans.