No free lunch

Strange. Got into a brief discussion with someone who's in favor of socialized medicine, then turned on the radio and caught the tail end of an interview on the Wall Street Journal's early morning broadcast, with a woman identified as head of some "public hospitals" organization saying with some disdain, "There is no free health care in America."

Hey... there's no free health care anywhere! Doctors and hospitals don't rain down from heaven, not even in France, England, or Canada.

At any rate, it occurs to me that it's becoming increasingly impossible to talk to anyone about any of this. Kinda like right before the Civil War -- both sides dug in and not willing to budge. But I don't know, I'm willing to let the government keep Medicare and Medicaid, as long as they leave the rest in private hands.

And if history can provide any indication of what will probably happen in the future, after a couple years of socialized medicine -- after all possible reserves and back-up funds have been looted and pillaged -- there's just not going to be enough medical resources to go around. No one will benefit from this. Everyone will lose. In fact, even Canada, that bastian of good intentions, now allows private health care services because the experiment with a socialized, single-payer system didn't work out quite as well as they wished.

We're working with two different mindsets here. Liberals just want to give people things, especially if they don't have to pay for it themselves. They truly do believe in Santa Claus, that some things really are "free." And that everything can be transformed into something "free." They believe if you want something bad enough, it will find its way to your doorstep... somehow. No questions asked, or answered.

Then there are conservatives, who aren't any less generous so much as they are first, rational. They probably won't give you the shirt off their backs unless they have another one. Somehow, liberals believe this attitude is morally wrong. Like, is it somehow "right" to mess up your own life, throw yourself upon the charity of others -- make yourself a burden to others -- so long as you're doing it for "other people"?

I mean, did you ever actually listen to that little recital by the stewardi on commercial flights? They tell you about how the oxygen masks drop out of the overhead console and show you how to put them on. They tell mothers, "Put on your own mask first before you put on your children's masks. If you have no oxygen, you're not going to do your children any good."

Is that really difficult to understand?

In fact, if the liberals wipe out the private health insurance and private health care industries in the USA, there will be no way to fund the giveaways. Liberals just don't get that. They persist in repeating (to anyone who cares to hear it) the mantra that the funding will come from somewhere. Wishes do come true. There certainly is a Tooth Fairy and an Easter Bunny, too. They say so, so it must be true. Maybe they read it in the New York Times. It must be true.

I don't get that.

What kind of lunacy is this, and how can anyone take this liberal bull-hockey seriously? I don't get it.

Like, I took political science 101 in college, and this particular professor had worked for the US State Dept. We were discussing oil and gasoline shortages in the US. The prof said something like the federal government had to increase the domestic supply of oil and gas. Like somehow, an increased supply could be legislated.

I asked him, "How would they do that?"

He said, "Oh, there's ways."

What "ways"? Buy a lottery ticket? Huh?

Actually, bad example... there are ways of increasing oil and gas. Like allow drilling domestic resources. And congress could act on that, but they're terrified an owl or something might die in the process.

When I was a kid, in our little neighborhood gang, we had this bizarre superstition. Don't know where it came from. Anyway, it went like this: If you see a mail truck, you cross your fingers and make a wish. Then you keep your fingers crossed until you see a dog, and your wish comes true.

I still keep doing that, entirely involuntarily. Like I'll be driving along and suddenly realize my fingers are crossed and have been crossed for quite some time. I've learned how to function with crossed fingers. I can make pie crust and count out change with crossed fingers. And it's all because of that stupid superstition -- which hasn't worked in more than 40 years, by the way. Not once. Not ever. And all I wish for is to find a bank sack full of cash. Not hard. Maybe dropped by a fleeing robber. No one gets hurt in that situation, right? It's not like I'd be stealing something that isn't rightfully mine, is it?

If you're a liberal, you probably answered "yes" to that question. If you're a conservative, no matter how much you wish things were different, you know you'd just have to return that money because, No, Virgina, there is no Santa Claus.

And who's moral?