Joe Stalin is coming to AN AMERICA NEAR YOU!
If nothing else, the Obama eruption in American politics is steadily revealing the stark reality behind the progressive movement - the totalitarian temptation is always there and, for more than a few, possessing the official power to compel sooner or later becomes irresistible.
Not everybody on the left, of course. Some of the folks I most admire in this town are liberals whose work on behalf of values like transparency in government and protecting civil liberties is remarkable and essential.
Still, that this danger is real and growing becomes more obvious as public opposition grows to the president's across-the-board campaign to turn Washington into the all-powerful, centralized behemoth that Woodrow Wilson and FDR could only dream about.
Consider: Nowhere does the Constitution grant Congress authority to require every American to buy a particular private service or product on pain of forfeiture of a significant portion of their wealth. Yet, every version of Obamacare currently being discussed in Congress requires just that.
So, huzzah for the public option, I guess?
Forcing all of us to buy officially approved health insurance is essential to a functioning government-run system. As Obama told Congress, "many of insurance reforms we seek - especially requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions - cannot be achieved" without the individual mandate.
Why? Because the politicians and bureaucrats who will manage the government-run health care program know that, without the force of government behind them, they won't be able to make the rest of us do what they tell us to do.
Once the power is granted, the question becomes how severe will the enforcement be. Fines will suffice, for Obamacare, for now. For Stalin, the first choice was usually the Gulag, or a bullet. It's just a matter of degree.
To accept this hypothesis one would need to accept that every other developed Western nation, which either provides healthcare directly through the government or mandates that citizens purchase health insurance through private companies who are forbidden to turn a profit on it, are essentially Siberian death camps.
This is of course accurate. Why, for instance, in Switzerland, they force you to either (1) obtain really excellent cheap health insurance, or (2) get shot dead in the street like a dog. The diabolical fiendish genius of this wicked plan is revealed in the fact that the Swiss, in overwhelming numbers, seem to prefer excellent, cheap healthcare to assassination. Thus is the final triumph of the Soviet Union assured.
In related news, "cake" is more popular than "death" throughout Western Europe as a whole. It really is a complete fucking shame the US lost the Cold War so decisively. WOLVERINES! Or, perhaps, HUMANA!
