Children and Feeble First

I see that the Baroness Warnock is back in the news again. This time she is advocating death to the elderly!

Baroness Warnock: Dementia sufferers may have a 'duty to die'

Elderly people suffering from dementia should consider ending their lives because they are a burden on the NHS and their families, according to the influential medical ethics expert Baroness Warnock.

The last time we heard from the Baroness she was advocating that premature infants should be allowed to die so that they would not eat up precious government health care resources. I guess I should not be surprised that she has now turned her eyes on the elderly and the mentally infirm. She needs to get together with this "gentleman" and compare notes.

The veteran Government adviser said pensioners in mental decline are "wasting people's lives" because of the care they require and should be allowed to opt for euthanasia even if they are not in pain.

She insisted there was "nothing wrong" with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or society.

The 84-year-old added that she hoped people will soon be "licensed to put others down" if they are unable to look after themselves.

This in a nutshell is the British model of government health care that our friends on the left (including Senators Obama and Biden) have in store for you and your aging parents. Me - I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy or even on the Baroness herself.

My dear friend Ed called it what it is.....totalitarianism.

Totalitarian governments have always worked this way; the shock comes from the same impulse occuring in supposedly enlightened democracies. We’re seeing a new kind of government these nanny states, though — a democratic totalitarianism that makes all of the choices for its subjects after they willingly give the bureaucracy the power of life and death over them. It’s a voluntary totalitarianism, and it starts by assigning government the role of caretaker from cradle to grave, the latter point coming at their choosing.

Western civilization built itself on the sanctity of human life and the rights of the individual. It doesn’t take much for Westerners to give up that birthright. The only incentive for voluntary slavery appears to be low-cost prescriptions and catastrophic hospital coverage. Once we buy into that system, all manner of personal choices get removed: the foods you can eat, the beverages you can drink, your pastimes, and apparently your right not to be murdered just to clear a hospital bed.

Resources will get rationed in one manner or another. Only air exists in such abundance that it needs no rationing. The question for any society is whether they will choose the efficient method of market-based rationing or the caprice of a top-down bureaucratic diktat. The former encourages more of the resource to be produced, while the latter restricts new resources and forces a shortage management system onto its community. We see this more clearly in Britain’s NHS than in any other Western construct, and Baroness Warnock’s monstrous demand is only the natural result.

And that is why Ed is Ed and he is the best at what he does. All I can add is that I pray that the Baroness does not fall prey to her own "monstrous" diktats.

Out In The Open

It is so nice that the Democrats are finally coming out and admitting that what they want for America IS socialism. First it was Rep. Maxine Waters, admitting in a recorded House Committee meeting that a government take over of the oil industry was necessary. Now Rep. Maurice Hinchley (D-NY) is calling for the government to take over an industry that "never should have been private in the first place.” (HT Allahpundit and Rick Moran). Rick asks the same questions on this government take over that I have been asking during the whole health care debate....name ONE thing that the federal government does now that it is good at? Health care? Look at the mess the Veterans Administration system is in. Running wars? Look at the mistakes made in Iraq. The IRS......puhlease! There is nothing that government bureaucrats do well or efficiently - what makes us think that a nationalized oil industry would be ANY different.

Rick asks another set of very pertinent questions as well.....

But to our Democratic Socialist friends (Can we start calling them that now? Can we?), the point is not supplying the American people with gasoline or heating oil but rather control – control of the industry so that it functions for “the benefit of the people.”

How often have we heard that battle cry in history? And oh how miserably those who have uttered it have failed to deliver promised benefits. From Lenin to Castro to Mugabe, the nationalization of industry to benefit “the people” has been a spectacular economic disaster. In the end, production in nationalized industry always declines. In the end, the industry has always fallen into ruins.

Rick is right - ALL of this talk of government taking over industries...whether it is health care OR petroleum production smacks of socialism and communism and maybe it is time to start calling this exactly what it is.....

Jazz Shaw and I will be discussing this with Rick Moran and possibly Ed Morrisey on Mid Stream Radio today over at Blog Talk Radio. Join us please.