You Cannot Free Yourself

Senator Rand Paul made a controversial statement this week, and I feel compelled to defend it. Please watch the following clip, then continue reading:

With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.

Unfortunately, too many people, including a few who should know better, have elected to oversimplify the implications of Senator Paul's statement.

Matt Welch at Reason, for example:

Could slaves free themselves by changing professions? Do doctors in Switzerland get taken away at gunpoint? To treat the analogy with technical seriousness, even setting aside (as if you could) the colossal weight of America's most lasting shame, is to render it ridiculous, in my opinion.

In my opinion, Matt Welch is working hard to miss the point.

First of all, let's discard the silly idea that slavery is a sacred topic. As noted by one commenter, "Slavery has existed for most of human history. It is not limited to the US. If you are offended by the use of the word, get over it. It is a valid English word, and not limited in scope to the antebellum South."

More importantly, let's disabuse ourselves of the notion that taxpaying physicians, by changing professions, can somehow free themselves from the involuntary servitude imposed by the redistribution schemes of health care entitlement programs.

Income taxes and payroll taxes are converted by government into all sorts of entitlement goodies, including health care. If you exercise the right to work for financial compensation, the state will infringe upon that right by confiscating the product of your time and effort to provide health care services for other citizens. This will happen whether you work as a physician or not. The arms of coercion are sometimes convoluted, but involuntary servitude in the health care industry is compulsory for everyone who is gainfully employed in the United States.

Let's also disabuse ourselves of the notion that hospitals and physicians can simply walk away from their explicit legal obligation to provide free care. Whatever ethical scruples a health care provider might or might not have (and regardless of whether patient is truly indigent) EMTALA laws force hospitals to provide free care to deadbeat patients, and the litigation risks associated with "patient abandonment" force doctors to provide care to those who will not pay.

I challenge Matt Welch to find a physician or hospital administrator who has managed to flout these laws without being "taken away at gunpoint."

If you listen carefully Senator Paul's comments, I think it will be pretty clear that he understands moral problems associated with entitlements are not confined to the health care industry:

Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services — do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? — you’re basically saying you believe in slavery.

I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care. You have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be.

[emphasis added]

Again, let's not get bogged down by the fact that physicians and hospitals are usually paid for their services. Here's a good response to Welch's post from the comments at Reason:

[Rand Paul] said that the idea that you have a right to health care means you have the right to the work of doctors and nurses and hospital administrators and janitors and pharmaceutical manufacturers in exchange for nothing at all. Whether the government wants to lift the burden and have the middle/upper classes pay for it through taxes is a side issue. The question is "Do you, an individual, have a RIGHT to health care?" If your answer is yes, you are pro-slavery, and like everyone else who has ever been pro-slavery, you want to be the master.

Ultimately, entitlements are a zero sum game. Directly or indirectly, entitlement programs transform tax-paying citizens into bond-servants for the recipients of entitlement freebies. That's true whether the entitlement goodies come from the health care industry, the housing industry, the education industry, or any other industry.

Rand Paul is right. The "right" to free stuff makes slaves of the producers of said stuff.

I wouldn't try to prescribe an overnight solution to the moral hazards that have been created by entitlement programs, but a truly compassionate, fair and free society would be actively seeking remedies.

X-posted

Senator Rand Paul Rocks!

by the Left Coast Rebel

Senator-elect Rand Paul of Kentucky is impressing me more by the day. A recent incident (Thursday of this week) in the bowels of the United States upper chamber of Congress highlight Senator Paul's willingness to call out leadership on both sides of the aisle for lack of adherence to principles (or not having any principles, whatsoever).

Having said that, Harry Reid is an easy target on the Libya war issue and the National Review has the story:

Washington — Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), a Tea Party favorite, has boxed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) into a corner. After a quiet day of quorum calls and speeches, Reid abruptly adjourned the upper chamber Thursday and postponed votes until Monday. According to numerous Hill staffers, Paul deserves some credit for the impasse.

Here’s the back story: On Wednesday, Paul, with little notice, attached an amendment to the small-business re-authorization bill. The amendment, which chastises President Obama for his actions in Libya, urges members to adopt the president’s own words as “the sense of the Senate.”

To make his point, Paul quoted, in the legislative language, from Obama’s 2007 remarks on the subject: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” According to Paul’s office, “the measure aims to put the Senate on record affirming Congress as the body with constitutional authority on matters of war.”

GOP sources tell National Review Online that Paul’s proposal flummoxed Reid, who does not want his members to have to weigh in on Obama’s dusty quote about congressional authority, even if the vote is only to table the measure. (Continue Reading)

I wish we had video of the incident above but Rand Paul's comments on the Senate floor the day before will do just fine:

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore, Flickr. Cross-posted to LCR, Rational Nation.

Butter, Guns AND Corporate Welfare

via WSJ

Skeptics in the statist democrat media (and even some RINOs) say tea partyers can't be serious about tackling the federal budget deficit unless they're prepared to commit political suicide by decimating Social Security and Medicare immediately. Senator Rand Paul begs to differ:

My proposal would first roll back almost all federal spending to 2008 levels, then initiate reductions at various levels nearly across the board. Cuts to the Departments of Agriculture and Transportation would create over $42 billion in savings each, while cuts to the Departments of Energy and Housing and Urban Development would save about $50 billion each. Removing education from the federal government's jurisdiction would create almost $80 billion in savings alone. Add to that my proposed reductions in international aid, the Departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and other federal agencies, and we arrive at over $500 billion.

My proposal, not surprisingly, has been greeted skeptically in Washington, where serious spending cuts are a rarity. But it is a modest proposal when measured against the size of our mounting debt. It would keep 85% of our government funding in place and not touch Social Security or Medicare.

Rand is prepared to slash spending in the Defense Department:

My proposal would also cut wasteful spending in the Defense Department. Since 2001, our annual defense budget has increased nearly 120%. Even subtracting the costs of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, spending is up 67%. These levels of spending are unjustifiable and unsustainable.

It's time to end corporate welfare:

Consistently labeled for elimination, specifically by House Republicans during the 1990s, one of Commerce's main functions is delivering corporate welfare to American firms that can compete without it. My proposal would scale back the Commerce Department's spending by 54% and eliminate corporate welfare.

We have two choices. Get serious about big cuts or make the kids work as indentured servants for the Chinese:

First, if you believe a particular program should be exempt from these cuts, I challenge you to find another place in the budget where the same amount can feasibly be cut and we can replace it.

Second, consider this: Is any particular program, whatever its merits, worth borrowing billions of dollars from foreign nations to finance programs that could be administered better at the state and local level, or even taken over by the private sector?

So will we do this or should we tell the kids to start learning Chinese?

Memeorandum thread

X-posted

Rand Paul on The Offensive

If this is what the next six years of Rand Paul will be like, I'm looking forward to it:

Up to this point I've been cautious about stating support for Rand Paul, but this exchange with Eliot Spitzer raises my level of confidence. He brilliantly deflected an attempted attack on his personal financial success by directing attention to Spitzer's personal failure, and he ended the interview with a long-overdue critique of liberal activism in journalism.

Good job, Rand.

Hat tip: architekt010

Cross Posted at Left Coast Rebel

Dabblers

Some suggested topics for Conservative and Republican bloggers:

• Young Christine O'Donnell dabbled into picnics and movies with creepy high school punks.
• Chris Coons dabbled into broken tax pledges and bankrupting his local government.
• Barack Obama dabbled into cocaine and THC. (Did he ever quit?)
• Joe Biden dabbled into plagiarism.
• Eddie Bernice Johnson dabbled into nepotism.
• Bob Etheridge dabbled into physical violence.
• Harry Reid dabbled into bold-faced lies.
• Nancy Pelosi dabbled into reckless statism.
• Barney Frank dabbled into prostitution.
• Phil Hare dabbled into blatant disregard for the Constitution.
• Alcee Hastings dabbled into insufferable arrogance.

Choose your topics wisely. Take timeliness, relevance and significance into consideration. Think about which topics are likely to receive insufficient coverage by the left-wing media and left-wing blogs. Focus on topics that will help to advance the principles that support limited government, personal accountability, liberty and economic prosperity in the upcoming elections.

Addendum:

If you think that conservative anti-establishment candidates like Sharron Angle, Rand Paul and Christine O'Donnell are awkward candidates loaded down with too much embarrassing baggage, you are certainly free to wring your hands and pace around the room...but if you want Republicans to win in November, I see a few proactive options. Which ones make sense?

a) Attack the conservatives, and play "I told you so" games.

b) Support the conservatives, warts and all.

c) Shrug off the embarrassing rumors and focus your attacks on the Democrats

d) Quietly write off states like Nevada and Delaware and support Conservatives/Republicans elsewhere.

e) Quietly write off states like Nevada and Delaware and attack Liberals/Democrats elsewhere.

For the life of me, I cannot understand the wisdom of pursuing the first option.

Liberals let their people get away with murder. Conservatives crucify their own as soon as they hear RUMORS of peccadilloes. Is it unreasonable to consider charting a course between those two extremes?

Update:

Memo to the Right: “The Lombardi Rule” Is In Effect

Update II:

Doctor Zero: "...once the primary is over, you stop hitting them. No one is obliged to fake enthusiasm for a candidate they dislike, but actively sabotaging the Republican candidate, with the stakes as high as they are, is madness."

More discussion: Memeorandum

h/t Doug Ross

Cross-posted at Left Coast Rebel

*Revision: added the word "quietly" to options (d) and (e) above.