Larry Elder Says the Poor, Uninsured Are On Their Own - 'Cause they Deserve To Be "Free."

More "health care is a privilege" and "let the paternalistically generous tend to the poor if they're so inclined" rubbish from Larry Elder at the unfortunately conservative and dated Orange County Register. With a couple of straw mans (liberals, FDR) and a heap of myths (Americans are the most generous people on earth) Elder sweeps the poor under the rug, unwilling to recognize that our glorious "free markets" have put them there and those of us who have are ruthless enough to keep them there.

This sort of ridiculous and circular logic takes all privilege out of the conversation and substitutes false ideas of freedom in its stead. Elder might as well have written "let them eat cake." So much for compassionate conservatism, huh? How this sort of shit even gets printed is beyond me. For all the damage and hatred Elder spews, I'd love nothing more than to see him run out of print - to some place like Somalia where there is no government and he can have all the glorious "freedom" he wants. Ungrateful, illogical, fabricated, discriminatory, elitist rubbish. If one asked him the question of why the poor (and more pertinent, how the uninsured) got that way, would he throw his hands in the air and said they're lazy and deserve to die without insurance? Hmmm:

This is not hypothetical. During the Great Depression, the Supreme Court struck down much of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal on constitutional grounds. No, said the Court, the federal governmentcannot use the Constitution's commerce clause to regulate virtually all economic activity. No, said the Court, the federal government cannot use the welfare clause to redistribute wealth, whether or not it accomplishes a socially or economically desirable objective.

The Court asserted that the Constitution meant what it said and said what it meant. This infuriated FDR. He threatened to expand the number of Court justices, adding jurists who saw the Constitution the way he did until he got the kind of decisions he wanted. Intimidated, the Court blinked. Actions by the federal government that the Court once had deemed illegal suddenly became permissible.

A liberal once asked me: "What should society do about the poor? Is your attitude 'just (expletive) them'?" I said: "Allow me to rephrase your question. Because of someone's plight, is he entitled to money from you?" "No," he said, "but it's the right thing to do." Yes, a moral, compassionate society cares for those who cannot care for themselves. This is, however, an entirely different matter from using the power of government to take from someone who has, to give to someone who doesn't. The Constitution does not provide that authority. Nor has it been amended to do so.

What about the poor? Through economic freedom and competition, we make goods and services cheaper, better and more accessible. Health care is less affordable because of well-intentioned rules and regulations. When government officials go beyond passing laws to protect us against force or fraud, they raise costs and hurt the poor.

Finally, what of charity? Americans are the most generous people on earth. The religious and those who believe in limited government are the most generous of all. By design, the federal government plays a limited role. The rest is up to us. Our country was founded in opposition to tyranny by government.

Today we submit to it.