Here we have an illuminating comparison between the Henry Louis Gates dust-up and the bid to impose state-run health care on the nation.
In short, there is a knowledge gap that the planners and fixers from on-high never, ever admit to. It is supremely arrogant to say the White House, a panel, a Supreme Court of Health, whatever, can design a health care plan for millions of individuals. And if you listen very, very closely backers of “reform” swerve away from saying that at the very last minute.
Maybe it was all the swerving I was doing the other day going through the Smoky Mountains on two-lane highways that brought me to the realization that the “health care debate” is not about health care at all. It is about adopting an explicitly Rawlsian organizing principle of civil society. Yes, everyone will run the risk of being worse off with a government bureaucracy doling out access to health care. But in exchange we will get the supposed guarantee of some access to health care without any upfront, visible transaction costs. As such, the debate is about risk and fear.
Yesterday I heard Rush Limbaugh go off on Obama for demonizing doctors the other night. I thought, “Of course he demonized doctors, it is all part of the same fear machine.” You can’t grow the state without fear. Baal knows George Bush used fear to grow the state for eight long years.
In effect, the planners and the know-it-alls “solve” the knowledge problem by whipping out fear at the last minute, the we-have-to-do-something-or-else move. See Act, PATRIOT. As soon people start thinking straight — wait, how do you know which heart medicine is best for me — bam! hit them with the Or Else.
We’re about to see if there is anything left of American exceptionalism.
