Ugly way to put it
I listened to the Neal Boortz show yesterday. A self-described liberal woman called the show to discuss socialized medicine. Neal explained when she claims that someone has a right to the services of a doctor, that doctor has legally lost a portion of his time, money, and life. Her reply to him was so bad I had to quickly open notepad and write it down. She replied:
“That’s an ugly way to put it.”
She later said that it sounds so much better if you just say that you believe people have a right to health care. She also said that she wished she was smart enough to debate it with Neal and that if we have a right to education and legal council, why not health care? Near the end of her call, she admitted that she “thinks more with her heart instead of her brain.”
This phone call reminded me of a debate I had with my sister in my pre-Objectivist days. The subject of public education and roads came up, and I was (unfortunately) the person who was arguing for them. I gave all of the default answers, trying to explain to my Objectivist sister all of the benefits society receives by having the government take care of them. She didn’t convince me that I was wrong that day, but she knocked a lot of holes in my arguments for me to try to fill later. As I thought more and more about it, I realized that I couldn’t claim that I was for people being free to live their lives and at the same time be an advocate for forcing people to do something. The inconsistency between the two positions was something that I had to resolve by picking one or the other. I couldn’t have both.
I’ve debated proponents of socialized health care, and many of them treat the issue the same as this woman did. When they as confronted with the fact that what they advocate can only happen by taking from somebody else, they’ll admit that it doesn’t sound good but then they stop. They don’t continue on and choose one of the two incompatible positions, freedom or non-freedom with the illusion of “free” health care. They just float between the two. It seems that half of the battle for free-market health care is to get people to be intellectually honest. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. You can’t have freedom and have the government forcing you to make the right decisions in your life.
I don’t know the woman who called the show beyond what she said during that call so I probably don’t know at what stage she is in her thinking (though, I think I might be able to make a good guess). I can say, though, that Neal exposed the inconsistency in her position in the same way my sister exposed mine. I hope it was enough to make her think long about what she really is advocating.
Tags: [boortz, health care]Comments
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