The Five Moral Arguments Against Socialized Medicine

NewsReal Blog ^ | August 30, 2009 | David Swindle

[HorowitzianConservative]

For Friday's episode of "Real Time," host Bill Maher eschewed his usual format of opening monologue, short interview, and panel discussion in exchange for the "special episode" style of long interviews with figures he admires. I'll save my commentary on the first half hour's interview with rap superstar Jay-Z for tomorrow. Today it's NewsReal Sunday and some of the comments from Maher's second guest, Baptist minister, Great Society architect, and "progressive" PBS journalist Bill Moyers need to be answered.

Moyers chose to phrase the health care issue in "moral" terms. Not quite the explicitly religious argument (refuted by NewsReal here, here, here and here) but still similar:

Maher: And he never really effectively has yet anyway, made it a moral issue.

Moyers: He started just recently, a few days ago. He talked about health care as a moral issue. But it is a moral issue! It's not an economic issue.

Maher then brought up Civil Rights in the '60s as a moral issue before he invoked the late, great mythology scholar Joseph Campbell (whom Moyers helped publicize to millions) and shifted the discussion to talk of metaphors capable of changing the debate:

Maher: What would be a true metaphor that we could use now that would change this?

[HorowitzianConservative]

Striking back at the Left with its own techniques.

[AnAmericanMother]

Looking at the response this guy’s clergyman “friend” wrote to him . . . he needs to find some new friends.

[Tempest]

I read those “moral” arguements and I found them to be lacking and mired in selfishnes and distrust for God.

[HorowitzianConservative]

Pat’s always much nicer to me when we’re talking face to face. It’s usually only in our written dialogues that things get more heated.

I’d hate to lose a friend just because we have a political disagreement. We’ll see, though..

[HorowitzianConservative]

How so?

[AnAmericanMother]

If a friend of mine wrote a note to me in which he explicitly said that he doubted I was telling the truth . . . .

. . . at the very least I would tell him that his ideology was getting in the way of his courtesy and common sense, that he knew better, and that he had best take back what he had said.

But I guess you put him on the hot seat when you asked if he was calling you a liar . . .

The truth of the matter is, liberals have for far too long been able to stop arguments without having to examine their own premises or facts -- simply by accusing those who disagree with them of immorality.

Perhaps your open letter is the best way to call him on it.

[Tempest]

Number one takes two fals opsition, first one being is that Paul has an entitlement to his possesions and that they were not given to him by the grace of God. Second being is that Paul is being denied the same benefits as Peter.

Position number two is not even a moral arguement as it is a position based on opinion and not fact.

Same goes with position number three, although 3 is more painful in it’s strained assumptions.

4 again is not a moral arguement so much as it is a red herring for self betterment without providing any actual path to self betterment.

5 is another false arguement since if we are to talk about morals once again from a judeo christian perspective than you should give unto Cesar what is Cesar’s and unto God what is Gods. Of course we could also go into the whole thing of how it’s God that puts governments into place, etc, etc.

6. plunging governments into debt is not a moral issue.

[HorowitzianConservative]

Thank you for proving my point:

“Thus we see how ambiguous the term “morality” is — how people can choose to make it mean whatever they want in order to further their objectives. What is moral derives from whatever religious or ideological belief system (BS) one ingests. What is immoral to one person’s BS is moral to another. In the Muslim world it’s “moral” to flog a woman for wearing pants. In the Western world this is profoundly immoral. So too in the health care debate. In the leftist world it’s “moral” for government to swallow up the health care industry to insure everyone gets “cheap” medical care. In the conservative world this is tremendously immoral.

Am I advocating “moral relativism” or some kind of ethical nihilism here? Certainly not. Not all moral systems are equal. Arguments can be made on behalf of one system of values as superior to another. And that’s what needs to be done. Either side merely invoking “morality” does nothing here to further the argument one way or another.”