Nietzsche Versus the Associated Press
The Post-Dispatch is hosting a truly stupid AP article lamenting that the nation’s uninsured (as in health, not personal effects) don’t band together to force change in Washington, D.C. “Change” here would, of course, involve making people who pay taxes pay more, so that people who don’t (with plenty of exceptions) can have health insurance given to them. Any potential problems with this utopia are ignored by the AP writer.
Articles like this make Nietzsche’s (one word, I am proud to say, I can spell without any help) prediction about democracy seem relevant (emphasis added in all of this blog entry’s quotes):
All political powers nowadays try to exploit the fear of socialism in order to strengthen themselves. But in the long run it is democracy alone that derives the advantage: for all parties are nowadays obliged to flatter the “people” and to bestow on it alleviations and liberties of every kind through which it will in the end become omnipotent. As socialism is a doctrine that the acquisition of property ought to be abolished, the people are as alienated from it as they could be: and once they have got the power of taxation into their hands through their great parliamentary majorities they will assail the capitalists, the merchants and the princes of the stock exchange with a progressive tax and slowly create in fact a middle class which will be in a position to forget socialism like an illness it has recovered from.
Consider this along with the AP story, which seems to be begging for the uninsured to band together and collectively demand to be covered — and not with some radical idea like health savings accounts, you can be sure:
But going without health insurance is still seen as a personal issue, a misfortune for many and a choice for some. People who lose coverage often struggle alone instead of turning their frustration into political action.
The tone of the article — although maybe I am reading it wrong — suggests that the idea that some might choose to be uninsured is insane, or that the reporter can’t comprehend the thought some people who don’t have insurance might actually not want to force others to provide it.
