The Inverse of Vote Buying

One well circulated worry of the more than 80% of non-Democrats who oppose ObamaCare is the likelihood--even certainty--that gov't care will be used as a political tool to buy the votes of powerful special interest groups who demand that health care dollars be directed toward politically correct treatments (such as for smoking cessation and contraception) and away from treatment of less fashionable injuries and disease (like severe head trauma, advanced cancers, and diseases of the elderly). This equivalent of the governmental "death panel" is horrifyingly well established in the UK and is getting entrenched in the state of Oregon, where lactose intolerance, obesity, drug abuse, pathological gambling, and sterilization have much high priority in the Oregon Health Care Plan than peritonitis, injuries to internal organs, appendicitis, ruptured spleens, tuberculosis, deep open wounds, and gangrene. (Could I make this up?)

But Snaggletoothie of the Loyal Opposition has pointed out an inverse danger, one which has gotten much less attention: the eagerness of groups of followers (in this case, Democrats) to have their demands designed by the government.

It all started when the cartoon program, Family Guy, openly mocked and insulted Sarah Palin and her baby, Trig. After Frank Luntz wired up a group of Democrats and Republicans to discover their reactions (watch it here), he was shocked and visibly upset to find out that the Democrats, who self-identify as the nation's defenders of compassion, had no problem with finding humor in the Down syndrome of an innocent child.

Snaggletoothie observed:

The Democrats often talk about how much more compassionate they are than others. But if they gleefully enjoy an attack on a powerless toddler because it fits some political agenda they have shown that there are severe limits to their compassion. They are too ready to mold their feelings to agendas and quotas set from on high for their feelings to be seen as any more than a conditioned response to orders from their leaders. These do not qualify as actual human feelings originating in the heart. In the end they are not distinguished by having compassion but rather by a near nonhuman readiness to follow orders and mold themselves to some norm they have little or no part in creating.

I would be afraid to give such people any power in the run-from-Washington health care system they want to institute. Who and what they will find worthy of receiving support and resources will be in constant flux. They are too conditioned to take direction from above. Their leadership will rule by fiat and they see it as their duty to obey. The shallowness and inconstancy of their feelings indicts them as unworthy to run or design a humane healthcare system.

It is undeniably frightening to observe a group of Americans abandon even the pretense of compassion because the object of the attack is the child of a political adversary. What might the inconstant undertows of the politics imbedded in a gov't health care system have in store for tomorrow's crop of political adversaries? The very thought of it makes private enterprise and competition the only possible alternative.

Time to call Congress, again.
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