One of the weapons I have noticed the left employing in this battle is the determination to call anyone who expresses such justified 'paranoia' a self-centered, uncharitable bigot (in so many words).
After all, we have been force-fed the mantra that our 'leadership' is doing this for the poor uninsured among us, so how then can we be against this 'philanthropic' effort? When will most Americans awaken to the fact that ... as you point out so convincingly ... one of the main focuses of this bill is to do away with people who are considered no longer productive and a drain on the Social Security/Medicare system?
Along that line, I posted a criticism of this bill on an investment-oriented board a week or so ago. Another poster came back at me with all manner of accusations, calling me 'greedy rich', uncompassionate, unwilling to pay higher taxs in order to benefit 'the least among us', and (of all things) an Iraq war hawk ... all of this based on opinions I wrote that were totally focused on the healthcare bill.
I responded, in part:
And yet, to you, anyone who expresses (admittedly conservative, in this case) common sense concern over aspects of this healthcare bill is automatically lumped into a pre-determined category which assumes that they fall into some universal ‘right-wing’ lock-step, on all other issues completely unrelated to the issue at hand.
If you go back and re-read my short healthcare post, I suspect you may discern, with your jaundiced crystal ball, other personal characteristics of mine – in addition to the aforementioned assumed anti-tax stance, ability to afford my own insurance, and hawkish war views. You may even determine that I’m a gun-loving, Bible-thumping, flannel-shirt-wearing, tobacco-chewing, front-tooth-missing militia member who has more than one brother named Darryl.
Not necessarily saying I’m not any of the above. Nor am I necessarily deprecating any of those characteristics either. Simply saying that I suspect that, to you, the presence of one mandates the presence of all. After all, we ‘right-wing radicals’ are not capable of independent thought or differing views.
... and I am prepared to write something similar again, when the need arises. As are you.
H. L. Menken once said, 'The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.' I don't always agree with Mencken, and I would have inserted 'by government' after the word 'urge' in this particular observation ... but I applaud him nonetheless. :)
This entire healthcare reform is just a mendacious, untransparent, cobbled-together, half-baked, inane house of cards.
I believe I may do that in counted cross-stitch, frame it and hang it on the wall in my office so as to encourage dialogue about this travesty. :) I don't believe I've ever read a better description!
Thank you, as always, for your insightful, eloquent commentary, betty!
~ joanie
The "urge to save humanity" is, of course, such a very very noble thing, bespeaking a love for one's fellow man that Bible-thumping, gun-toting citizens, in their abject ignorance and selfishness, simply do not have.
Whatta crock. People who say such things are either psychiatric patients or brain-dead narcissists. What they really object to is freedom — the freedom of other people to do things they happen to personally dislike.
The biggest secret of such "lovers of humanity," as Fyodor Dostoyevsky described it, is twofold: (1) they believe that the divine gift of individual liberty is not only a complete waste — since men are slaves by nature and unruly to boot, and experience the gift of freedom not as a blessing, but as a curse causing endless suffering; and so (2) man must be "saved" from this freedom in order to find "happiness."
They that claim to love us so much actually hold us in utter contempt. They find us wholly unfit to rule ourselves. Thus they, these self-appointed noble lovers of mankind, will take it upon themselves to make all things right, to make the right choices for us (since we don't know how to use our freedom and intelligence to make the kinds of choices of which they approve). We are to understand that this is a tremendous sacrifice on their part, undertaken in order to reduce the suffering of the rest of us dimwits — that is to say, of every member of the entire human race that doesn't attend elite cocktail parties in New York, Boston, or Washington.
From the chapter "The Grand Inquisitor," The Brothers Karamazov, in which a self-selected sufferer taking on all the freedom of humanity in order to give them "happiness" rebukes Christ, who died to make us free:
...today, people are more persuaded than ever that they have perfect freedom, yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet....The clever people. Who so "love" mankind that they are prepared to "suffer" for us, just so we can be happy. Oh goody. The cynicism, the atheism implicit in these passages is chilling, nauseating. They are the ultimate rejectionists: They reject, not only God, but man, and all of created nature as well.Thou know that for the sake of that earthly bread the spirit of the earth will rise up against Thee and will strive with Thee and will overcome Thee, and all will follow him, crying, "Who can compare with this beast? He has given us fire from heaven!"... there is no crime, and therefore no sin; there is only hunger.... So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship.
In place of the rigid ancient law, man must hereafter with free heart decide for himself what is good and what is evil, having only Thy image before him as his guide. But didst Thou not know he would at last reject even Thy image and Thy truth, if he is weighed down with the fearful burden of free choice?
...we too have a right to preach a mystery, and to teach them that it's not the free judgment of their hearts, not love that matters, but a mystery which they must follow blindly, even against their conscience....
I don't want Thy love, for I love Thee not.... We are not working with Thee, but with him — that is our mystery. [Note: him is the "wise and dread spirit, the spirit of self-destruction and non-existence" who tempted Christ in the wilderness. If Christ had allowed Himself to be thrice tempted], Thou wouldst have accomplished all that man seeks on earth — that is, some one to worship, someone to keep his conscience, and some means of uniting all in one unanimous and harmonious ant-heap, for the craving for universal unity is the third and last anguish of men. Mankind as a whole has always striven to organize a universal state....
For who can rule men if not he who holds their conscience and their bread in his hands? We have taken the sword of Caesar, and in taking it, of course, have rejected Thee and followed him. Oh, ages are yet to come of the confusion of free thought, of their science and cannibalism. But then the beast will crawl to us and lick our feet and spatter them with tears of blood. And we shall sit upon the beast and raise the cup, and on it will be written, "Mystery." But then, and only then, the reign of peace and happiness will come for men....
...they will love us as children because we allow them to sin. We shall tell them that every sin will be expiated, if it is done with our permission, that we allow them to sin because we love them, and the punishment for these sins we take upon ourselves....
And all will be happy, all the millions of creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we, we who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferes who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity... Thou will come again in victory, Thou will come with Thy chosen, the proud and strong, but we will say that they have only saved themselves, but we have saved all.... Know that I fear Thee not.... I awakened and would not serve madness. I turned back and joined the ranks of those who have corrected Thy work....
...millions of God's creatures have been created as a mockery, that they will never be capable of using their freedom, that these poor rebels can never turn into giants ... that it was not for such geese that the great idealist [Plato] dreamt his dream of harmony. Seeing all that [the Grand Inquisitor] turned his back and joined — the clever people.
But this is the "stuff" that Washington is selling these days, people.
Wake up America!!! Ask not for whom the bell tolls, for it tolls for THEE. And thine.