The Timelessness of C.S. Lewis: 'tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive'

Photo Cred: Sigurdur Jonsson's flickr

Via My Old Man, from C.S. Lewis's essay anthology "God in the Dock" (1948):

My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position would act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse. Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be 'cured' against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

 (Emphasis added)

It's tough to make common cause with Progressives, for the libertarian ends I support (for instance, to legalize marijuana), when they fail to see any problem with the i-legalizing of things like soda over a certain size, or banning trans fats.

It's not helped by certain of my progressive friends, who call themselves libertarians (for contrarian, not principled, reasons), who believe their support for pot legalization and their 'why can't we all just marry who we love' attitude towards same sex marriage makes them libertarians.

Their position on these issues is buttressed by their support for an out and out expansion of the nanny state--especially Obamacare.

When confronted with the inconsistency of their position on these and other issues of the day, they (I kid you not) tell me, 'well, Obamacare is [editorial insert: not yet] as bad as the Iraq War, so there.'

These are the people who elected Barack Obama to a second term.

Sorry, buddy, wanting to be able to smoke your pot legally and thinking that your friends ought to be able to get gay married does not make you a libertarian--at least, not when you also think government should expand its services and increase taxes to support that growth.

That just makes you a liberal. Or a progressive. Which label you prefer makes no difference to me.

Post-ObamacareApocalypse: The Way Forward Weekend Edition

Taken in a vacuum, the liberal media's response to the right's response to Obamacare's passage might leave you thinking that no one before in American history has ever been so angry about so little.

They just do not get that something that will give government control over 1/6th of the American economy, expand the Nanny State, cost hundreds of billions of dollars, raise taxes, result in fewer doctors, the eventual rationing of care, reduced R&D (resulting in future lives lost), give access to medical records to a huge and whole new cadre of government bureaucrats, generally reduce liberty is something that would actually make people angry. And they say it as though they've never been angry over anything.

Well, fortunately we have Jonah Goldberg to point out their incredible hypocrisy.

On the scale of anger-to-actual-impact-of-legislation, progressives have got us angry conservatives (but I repeat myself, apparently) beat by a wide margin in their out and out hysteria over the passage of the Patriot Act. Yeah, remember that bill? It's the same one the One and the Democrats in Congress renewed this year, again.

Also, lybberty-approved (unless they are caught in some wrongdoing!) Congressmen Mike Pence and Paul Ryan had fantastic Op-Eds in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times respectively, yesterday. Give them both a read.

Stay angry, my conservative friends.

(image of 'angry conservatives' protesting the bill taken from Thinking The Wright Way)

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Post-ObamacareApocalypse: The Way Forward Thursday

7:00pm: Jonah Goldberg, one of my favorite conservative columnists and a good guy with whom to share a serving of nachos at Appleby's, writes of leftist consternation at the conservative response to the passing of Obamacare:

A lot of people on the left cannot come to grips with the conservative "overreaction" to Obamacare. I don't think it's an overreaction, and I can help liberals understand what's happening. Just consider the Patriot Act. Here was a law that affected a teeny-weeny number of people. Almost all of the horrible things it did never happened. Remember all that teeth-gnashing about searched libraries? Totally bogus.

And yet, people all over the country got their dresses over their heads about the Patriot Act. Why? Well, I would argue partly out of addlepated paranoia, ignorance, and Bush hatred. They would argue it was out of deep-seated principle. Let's compromise and say that for many, it was both, and for a few, it was all about principle.

Well, opposition to PPACA seems vastly more rational to me. By its very design it affects everyone. It costs them money. It will cost them freedom. It will cost our country money, medical innovation, and mounds of debt. It involves far, far more government intrusion into our lives than the Patriot Act. And yet, many of the same people who considered the Patriot Act an American Nuremburg Law think this is one of the greatest moments in American history.

Do you get it now, progressives, why we are so up-in-arms about this little piece of legislation? It really will cost us money, time, freedom, and innovation--which means lives. This is a bad bad bill. By the time its costs are fully calculated and comprehended(the next generation of economic historians), it may well surpass Smoot Hawley.

Like I've said, the Brits declined because the cost to support their welfare state forced withdrawal around the world. This is our future if this thing stands and expands into Euro-social welfare. American decline.

BTW, you really should subscribe to Jonah's "Goldberg File." It's a real treat.

2:28pm: Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey has a post up with some great quotes and video of Charles Krauthammer, doctor-genius, and Dan Mitchell, Cato Institute, warning about the coming debate about a VAT. If you don't know what a VAT is, I recommend you click the link and read the wiki entry. A VAT might be okay if it were to take the place of existing taxes like payroll taxes, but it won't be. It will be just another revenue stream for the feds to shove big government down your throat.

Meanwhile at Reason.com (free minds and free markets!) Jacob Sullum explains why this healthcare mandate is not exactly, you know, constitutional and why a legal challenge just may be successful.

There's hope yet.

Finally (for the time being), if you are pro-life and thought there was a home for you in the Democrat party, well, sorry, you're wrong. William McGurn explains how Obamacare exposes the Democrat Party as the Party of Death (also, you'll note, the title of a book by Ramesh Ponnuru).

1:37pm BST: The Dark Lord, Karl Rove, provided a good roadmap to electoral victory in his column today. I love the fact that we conservatives love this guy while leftists think he is the devil incarnate. Don't they know? This just makes us love him all the more.

Democrats claim they've rallied their left-wing base. But that base isn't big enough to carry the fall elections, particularly after the party alienated independents and seniors. The only way Democrats win a base election this year will be if opponents of this law stay home.

To keep that from happening, Republican candidates must focus on ObamaCare's weaknesses. It will cost $2.6 trillion in its first decade of operation and is built on Madoff-style financing. For example, it double counts Social Security payroll taxes, long-term care premiums, and Medicare savings in order to make it appear more fiscally responsible. In reality, ObamaCare isn't $143 billion in the black, as Democrats have claimed, but $618 billion in the red. And giving the IRS $10 billion to hire about 16,000 agents to enforce the new taxes and fees in ObamaCare will drive small business owners crazy.

Republicans have a powerful rallying cry in "repeal, replace and reform." Few voters will want to keep onerous mandates that hit individuals and taxes that hobble economic growth. Rather than spending a trillion dollars on subsidies for insurance companies and Medicaid expansion, as ObamaCare does, Republicans should push for giving individuals the same health-insurance tax break businesses get, which would cost less.

Republicans must also continue to press for curbing junk lawsuits, enabling people to buy insurance across state lines, increasing the amount of money they can sock away tax free for medical expenses, and permitting small businesses to pool risk.

Opponents of ObamaCare have decisively won the battle for public opinion. As voters start to feel the pain of this new program, Republicans will be in a stronger position if they stay in the fight, make a principled case, and lay out a competing vision.

This is as good a place as any to point out something that frequently gets forgotten.

I'm really really tired of people talking and acting as though the left wing of the Democrat party is on par with the right wing of the Republican party.

When the country breaks down 40% conservative, 40% moderate, and 20% liberal, the left wing of the Democrat party is not only a hell of a lot smaller than the right wing of the Republican party, it is a hell of a lot further from the natural ideological center of this country.

So all you self-styled post-partisan centrist moderates, who keep trying to say, "well, they're both extremes and bad" and like to pound on conservative wingers as being as "damaging" and as far out of the mainstream as liberal wingers, you're wrong.

Did anyone (besides me) happen to watch the Obamacare debate (limited, though it was) Sunday night on CSPAN? I think Dan Henninger's characterization of the Republicans and Democrats that night is spot on:

Spring renewal and baseball's new season are upon us, so let's quote the optimism of Yogi: It isn't over until it's over. I thought 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday night in Washington was the Republican Party's finest hour in a long time. When the voting stopped, the screen said the number of Republicans voting for Mr. Obama's bill was zero. Not one. Nobody.

Pristine opposition is being spun as a Republican liability. It looks to me like a Republican resurrection. The party hasn't yet discovered what it should be, but this clearly was a party discovering what it cannot be.

Put it this way: If you produce a bill that Olympia Snowe of Maine cannot vote for, you have not produced legislation "for the generations." You have not even produced legislation that is liberal. You have produced legislation from the left. You have produced once-in-a-lifetime legislation that no Republican from any constituency across America could vote for.

Watching Paul Ryan, John Boehner, and Mike Pence I was as happy with Republican leadership as I have been in a long time. Finally some backbone. Finally some principle. Finally they stood up to the Democrats and exposed them as the out-of-touch, tax and spend statists that they are. As Henninger points out, this whole debate puts liberals who aren't employed by the government in a tough spot.

Liberals in the private sector have to come to grips with the fact that what they do for a living is an abstraction to the people they are sending to Washington. Nobody at the top of the party is much interested in them anymore. House and Senate Democrats hammered insurance, pharma and medical-device makers with taxes and intimidation. It wasn't just politics. It was belief. With this bill, the party made the transition from market unionism to Alinskyism, from a politics tempered by the marketplace to one that milks the marketplace.

Count Henninger and myself among those who think "Repeal!" is a good rallying cry in the run-up to the 2010 election. First repeal the Democrats in Congress, then in 2012 the Democrat in the White House then, once he's gone, Obamacare will quickly follow him out the door.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Post-ObamacareApocalypse: The Way Forward (UPDATED & Edited Wednesday)

Lot's of angry emails from people from whom I haven't heard in awhile. And with good reason. Never, in the history of this country, has legislation so transforming been passed with out a bi-partisan majority and against the will of the people.

Could the American people--through numerous opinion polls, the election of Scott Brown, the Tea Party movement, hundreds of thousands of emails, calls, and letters to member of Congress--have been any more clear about their opposition to, and in some instances, intense hate of, ObamaCare?

Though I plan on responding to everyone individually, I figured I'd give my opinion, in the form of what I'm reading/thinking/etc., to the question on everybody's minds: What next?

Before I even get to the practical stuff, let me remind us all (myself included) of what we are--we are Happy Warriors. Whatever else happens, it is always Morning in America. We must be positive, optimistic and upbeat as we respond to the haters on the extreme left. If there were no battles left to fight, life would be pretty boring.

First of all, here's the BookFace page of Dan Benishek, the guy who's challenging the pro-life Benedict Arnold, Bart Stupak. Join his group, donate to his campaign and do whatever else you can to help get him elected.

Also, you absolutely must get on that Twitter. Every last bit of news is broken first on Twitter. I'm not saying you have to follow me, but looking through the list of people I follow, would be a good place to start.

Yesterday, for instance, I was doing a running commentary while watching CSPAN on the interwebs. And so were lots and lots of other people.

Second, here's a few articles to educate you about our Nanny State future:

Tuesday 23 March

12:22pm BST: Jonah Goldberg on the ongoing culture war the left has wrought and will continue to bring as a result of the passage of Obamacare:

this legislation is a superconducting super collider of culture-war conflagrations. It will throw off new and unforeseen cultural spectacles for years to come (if it is not repealed). The grinding debate over the Stupak amendment was just a foretaste. The government has surged over the breakwater and is now going to flood the nooks and crannies of American life. Americans will now fight over what tax dollars should cover and not cover. Debates over "subsidizing" this "lifestyle" or that "personal choice" will erupt. And when conservatives complain, liberals will blame them for perpetuating the culture war.

Silver lining? Ross Douthat writes that now we get to see if all those crazy liberal predictions about Obamacare saving the planet, etc., will actually come true.

Amity Shlaes (one of the old man's fav columnists, BTW) writes that Democrats' math is more than just fuzzy, it's a straight up lie--or, as Douglas Holtz-Eakin put it, "fantasy in, fantasy out." (regarding those ridiculous CBO numbers)

Monday 22 March

Milton Friedman on "A Way Out of Soviet-Style Healthcare." I wish he were still around.

WSJ Op-Ed on the real question underlying the bill: 'who commands the country's medical resources--the people or the government?'

Megan McArdle on the Democrat Party's parliamentary hijinks, deception of the people, and contempt for the majority will.

Christopher DeMuth of AEI on the 'historical inevitability' of progressivism. What he doesn't point out is just how much theory today's progressives borrow from Karl Marx. Yes, that Karl Marx.

UPDATE 1:12pm BST: The NRO Symposium on What Now?

AND

'Paul Ryan is not ready to give up on the fight on health care.' Good thing.

UPDATE 2:16pm: There are a lot of things I really dislike and disagree with in this piece by David Frum, but he does make one very important point: Major legislative victory trumps legislative majority. I hope future Republican majorities take this to heart and pass conservative-transformative legislation.

In the future, we must have gamechangers. Getting the White House or a majority in Congress is worth very little if all we do is slow the increase of government and spending. Then Republicans are just Democrats-lite. Republican representatives must pass market-based reforms of all areas of government. They must do away entirely with departments like Education and above all, they must repeal Obamacare.

The guys at Power Line with their Silver Linings.

In yesterdays Washington Post, Randy Barnett, a constitutional lawyer at Georgetown, asked, "Is health care reform Constitutional?" Requiring people to purchase heath care? I don't think so.

UPDATE 2:37p: Watch Paul Ryan and Mike Pence (two potential contenders for the 2012 GOP Presidential nomination) speechify about health care and rights and freedom.

Romney's condemnation of Obamacare--"unconscionable abuse of power"

Also, there's this: Blame Bush.

UPDATE 3:22p: Greg Mankiw: "How long can the President wait before he comes clean with the American people and explains how high taxes need to rise to pay for his vision of government?"

UPDATE 4:36p: Today's WSJ Op-Ed on the passage of Obamacare:

We fought this bill so vigorously because we have studied government health care in other countries, and the results include much higher taxes, slower economic growth and worse medical care.

Some of my friends argued in favor of this bill because "finally their (fill in the blank) member of the family would be able to get care." Well, sure, if by "care" you mean that according to the bill, they can "technically" see a doctor. The reality will be much different. Just hope that your cancer ridden (fill in the blank) isn't getting on in age, because their care will be rationed.

The WSJ's Kimberley Strassel on all the threats, bribes, and kickbacks required to pass Obamacare. Are you okay with this sort of behavior?

(I'll update this post periodically throughout the day and week as I come across more stuff of note)

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

The Beginning Of America's Decline?

Depressing that this post comes after the one about America's comeback. But as Mark Steyn put it, it's tough to be optimistic:

Well, it seems to be in the bag now. I try to be a sunny the-glass-is-one-sixteenth-full kinda guy, but it's hard to overestimate the magnitude of what the Democrats have accomplished. Whatever is in the bill is an intermediate stage: As the graph posted earlier shows, the governmentalization of health care will accelerate, private insurers will no longer be free to be "insurers" in any meaningful sense of that term (ie, evaluators of risk), and once that's clear we'll be on the fast track to Obama's desired destination of single payer as a fait accomplis.

If Barack Obama does nothing else in his term in office, this will make him one of the most consequential presidents in history. It's a huge transformative event in Americans' view of themselves and of the role of government. You can say, oh, well, the polls show most people opposed to it, but, if that mattered, the Dems wouldn't be doing what they're doing. Their bet is that it can't be undone, and that over time, as I've been saying for years now, governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people. As I wrote in NR recently, there's plenty of evidence to support that from Britain, Canada, and elsewhere.

More prosaically, it's also unaffordable. That's why one of the first things that middle-rank powers abandon once they go down this road is a global military capability. If you take the view that the U.S. is an imperialist aggressor, congratulations: You can cease worrying. But, if you think that America has been the ultimate guarantor of the post-war global order, it's less cheery. Five years from now, just as in Canada and Europe two generations ago, we'll be getting used to announcements of defense cuts to prop up the unsustainable costs of big government at home. And, as the superpower retrenches, America's enemies will be quick to scent opportunity.

Longer wait times, fewer doctors, more bureaucracy, massive IRS expansion, explosive debt, the end of the Pax Americana, and global Armageddon. Must try to look on the bright side . . .

Congratulations, progressives. You've just made the citizens of the country started with a Declaration of Independence permanent wards of the state. This is what you wanted--to begin to manage and organize and run people's lives--and you got it.

The post-WWII decline of Great Britain wasn't inevitable. It was hurried along its way by their "governmentalized" health care. And all of the things that everyone now predicts for the US are already reality in the UK: long wait times, fewer doctors, ever-expanding debt & cost, drop in quality, bureaucracy between the patient and the doctor, and on and on.

As my econ-minded friends like to point out, there are always trade-offs. Don't assume that this, the most massive entitlement in American history, will come without cost. By the time the full reality of this thing hits, it's going to hurt everybody.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Martin Feldstein: 'Obamacare Could Have Unintended Consequence Of Raising Premiums & Reducing Number Of Insured'

Ah, the perverse unintended consequences of government meddling in markets.

The Congressional Budget Office is required to estimate the cost of the law as it is written, not as it may evolve. But we as taxpayers will have to pay those future costs.

As with nearly every other government program, the cure is far, far worse than the disease.

(h/t Scott L.)

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.