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News & ArtsWednesday, September 1, 2010
Politics Churchill on Socialized Medicine
Posted by Dan Savage on Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 7:00 AM
That Churchill quote about appeasement from the current issue of the New Yorker was good—good and awkward for conservatives—but this Churchill quote about the creation of Britain's National Health Service is just as good and more awkward for all those Churchill-worshiping conservatives out there:
This faith in government as the essential caretaker led him later to support the creation of a national health service, "in order to ensure that everybody in the country, irrespective of means, age, sex, or occupation, shall have equal opportunities to benefit from the best and most up-to-date medical and allied services available."
Faith in government? Equal opportunities to benefit? Medical care provided irrespective of means? My God, the man was a socialist! Shouldn't Glenn Beck be praising Barack Obama for sending that bust back?
1
I always think it's cute when progressives think the right will somehow use reason without being told what to believe. If Beck told his fans that Churchill was really a communist lesbian, the polls would instantly show twenty percent of Americans believe Churchill was a communist lesbian.
3
If Beck told his fans that Churchhill was a Nazi sympathizer and that Matthew 5:1 read "God Bless America," I doubt any of his fans would challenge him.
4
Vince @1 is on to something I've been thinking about a while now: I always think it's cute when progressives think the right will somehow use reason without being told what to believe.
The late NY Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once famously said, "You're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts."
Sure, Moynihan's quote is true, but it's not "the truth." Progressives have to start realizing that you can't only combat lies and fictions with facts and the truth. It is human nature that people really are entitled to their own facts according to their own opinions. The trick here is getting at why people want to believe what they believe.
The late NY Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once famously said, "You're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts."
Sure, Moynihan's quote is true, but it's not "the truth." Progressives have to start realizing that you can't only combat lies and fictions with facts and the truth. It is human nature that people really are entitled to their own facts according to their own opinions. The trick here is getting at why people want to believe what they believe.
5
Ok, Mr. Churchill, but you wrote that when medicine had only recently stopped using leeches, and you were concerned that everyone have access to penicillin and morphine. The medical technology engine we currently rely on requires gobs of money, and freedom to advance in every direction in order to find the few, narrow avenues that work. Forgive me for not trusting a government that bails out idiotic banks, starts and can't capably complete unnecessary wars, and exists primarily to turn legislation into lobbyist-funded vacation homes with my goddamn life and health.
6
My policy of drowning anyone who has so much as a cold would end this stupid health care debate once and for all.
7
I like that more people are paying attention to Churchill now, in any case. Young historian Richard Toye's Churchill's Empire is a fabulous case in point. When Churchill was bad, he was very, very bad, but when he was good, he was terrific.
From assassinating the Mau Mau, rejoicing in concentration camp building in South Africa, setting the Black and Tans on the Irish Catholics, urging gassing of the Kurds in Iraq, clearing Kenyan highlands of blacks including Obama's grandfather (imprisoned without trial and tortured) in detention camps 150,000 were forced into at gunpoint.
The NYT review last month wrote of Toye's book that "In the end, the words of the great and glorious Churchill who resisted dictatorship overwhelmed the works of the cruel and cramped Churchill who tried to impose it on the world’s people of color."
From assassinating the Mau Mau, rejoicing in concentration camp building in South Africa, setting the Black and Tans on the Irish Catholics, urging gassing of the Kurds in Iraq, clearing Kenyan highlands of blacks including Obama's grandfather (imprisoned without trial and tortured) in detention camps 150,000 were forced into at gunpoint.
The NYT review last month wrote of Toye's book that "In the end, the words of the great and glorious Churchill who resisted dictatorship overwhelmed the works of the cruel and cramped Churchill who tried to impose it on the world’s people of color."
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