I'd forgotten that Jonah Goldberg has a blog specifically devoted to "Liberal Fascism," which he uses to deposit random items that he runs across and that he imagines proves his thesis, much in the same way that he would stick his gum under his desk "for later." Anyway I imagine that everyone else also forgot he had this little hidey-hole, or this well-chewed gooey wad of stupid might have gotten more noticed at the time it was hocked up.
Lebensunwertes Leben
From the LA Times:
Reporting from Washington — President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care.
In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don't unthinkingly approve "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."
He added: "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."
There's an interesting contradiction here. According to the pro-choice perspective, it's outrageous for the state to interfere in a woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy. But it's pragmatic and reasonable for the state to consider terminating a person, if some money can be saved.
This logic is nothing new.
The link of course goes to a Wikipedia entry about Nazis and mass killings.
Anyway, there's no "contradiction" here, since he's talking about families making better informed decisions, not "the state" forbidding old people from having surgery to save money. So the principle is the same, that health decisions should be left to the person or people most directly involved.
More to the point, the dilemma Obama is talking about is one that families of people with terminal diseases have to face all the time. And, yes, obviously there are lots of cases where people have had risky, grueling, expensive surgeries, when they really would have been better off taking the painkiller. And that can be a damn hard thing to watch.
But I don't suppose the sort of people who went nuts over Terri Schiavo, or the people who would look at Obama's statement and think Buchenwald, actually give a rat's ass about the realities facing families in such situations, either because they're actual sociopaths or just pretending to be for fun & profit.
Anyhow it's good to remember now and again that while Jonah Goldberg sometimes comes across as a hilarious doofus, he really is at bottom a horrible little shit.