In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, the always excellent Peggy Noonan eloquently captured the essence of my loathing for Obama's health care reform proposals. Her words articulated a basic libertarian resistance to the philosophical core of what Obama, Pelosi, and their limousine liberal ilk would inflict upon the rest of us if we let them. As Noonan says,
"We are living in a time when educated people who are at the top of American life feel they have the right to make very public criticisms of...the private, pleasurable but health-related choices of others. They shame smokers and the overweight. Drinking will be next. Mr. Obama's own choice for surgeon general has come under criticism as too heavy."
"Only a generation ago, such criticisms would have been considered rude and unacceptable. But they are part of the ugly, chafing price of having the government in something: Suddenly it can make very big and personal demands on you. Those who live in a way that isn't sufficiently healthy 'cost us money' and 'drive up premiums.' Mr. Obama himself said something like it in his press conference, when he spoke of a person who might not buy health insurance. If he gets hit by a bus, 'the rest of us have to pay for it.'"
"Under a national health-care plan we might be hearing that a lot. You don't exercise, you smoke, you drink, you eat too much, and 'the rest of us have to pay for it.'"
"It is a new opportunity for new class professionals (an old phrase that should make a comeback) to shame others, which appears to be one of their hobbies...Every time I hear Kathleen Sebelius talk about 'transitioning' from 'treating disease,' to 'preventing disease,' I start thinking of how they'll use this as an excuse to judge, shame, and intrude."
"So this might be an unarticulated public fear: When everyone pays for the same health-care system, the overseers will feel more and more a right to tell you how to live, which simple joys are allowed and which are not."
"Americans in the most personal, daily ways feel they are less free than they used to be. And they are right, they are less free."
"Who wants more of that?"
