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This CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP certainly is! And it's a cinch to make, too (Includes techinques and serving secrets) February 7, 2012 Kathleen Hennessey and Christi Parsons: Obama not worried that birth-control move will hurt his re-election chances with Catholics, other faithful Caroline B. Glick: Obama's rhetorical storm Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Caught off-guard? President's Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer gives those who need a reason not to vote for him, a darn good one Suzanne Bohan: Leaping lizards! 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Jewish World Review Oct. 14, 2009 / 26 Tishrei 5770 Morality Ends Where a Gun Begins By Robert Tracinski http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Oddly, it has taken until recently — when they are growing increasingly desperate — for the advocates of President Obama's health-care plan to begin arguing for it on moral grounds. Washington Post blogger Susan Jacoby, for example, recently started a debate on the issue, asking: "Why has it proved so difficult for advocates of real reform, including President Obama, to convey the profoundly moral nature of this issue to the public?" That is an interesting question, isn't it? For all their blustering about how insurance companies are "evil" and opponents of government-run health-care are "evil-mongers," it seems that the left is not so confident after all that it occupies the moral high ground. And it shouldn't be, because the left is actually opposed to the application of morality to the health-care debate. The little debate started on the Washington Post blog is instructive, because it is producing a lot of "moral" arguments for government-controlled health-care that are similar to a response I got to one of my previous essays. In explaining why Obama's proposals would destroy health insurance, I wrote that "Health insurance companies refuse to cover pre-existing conditions for the same reason that you can't insure your automobile after you crash it. Insurance is a form of financing for the unexpected and unpredictable. It is not a mechanism to force somebody else to pick up the tab for expenses you have already incurred." Here is the reply I got: How can you compare an automobile to a human being and their needs for treatment for illnesses? I think this shows a total lack of compassion. Are you really that cold and uncaring or are you just insane? I think your commentary is despicable. Notice that this doesn't refute my point about the nature of insurance. Rather, it declares that point — and any other argument — irrelevant. People have needs, very important needs — and therefore it is monstrous to waste time debating about how we are going to pay for the care we need, or what economic and legal principles might limit our actions. We should just go out and force someone to provide for us. The basic outlook is: when it comes to our really important, life-or-death needs, to hell with thinking and logic. Which means: to hell with principles. This is amorality disguised under moral posturing. The most profound answer to this view of the role of morality was offered by the pro-capitalist philosopher Ayn Rand when she wrote that "Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins." Note the connection Ayn Rand draws between morality and thinking. The moral posturers on the left appeal to emotion — the benevolent emotion of compassion, as cover for uglier motives like envy and resentment — and they regard the intrusion of reason and logic, of economics and legality, as cold, heartless, despicable. But doing whatever you feel like, because you feel like it — demanding whatever you need, because you need it — is the opposite of morality. Morality requires the subordination of one's momentary urges to basic principles and a consideration of long-range consequences. Consideration of long-term consequences means more than just narrow issues like whether a mandate to insure those with preexisting conditions, along with a pile of other new regulations, will drive up the cost of health insurance and make it unaffordable, which it will. It also goes beyond legal questions like whether it is permissible to impose a tax on insurance premiums from which you exempt favored groups. Serious moral thinking about public policy requires, first and foremost, a consideration of what happens when we replace persuasion with coercion as the guiding power in human affairs. It requires that we begin by grasping the role of liberty and individual rights in keeping a civilized society civilized. The basic moral principle that limits the actions of government is the fact that other people's lives and livelihoods are not yours to dispose of. If you want someone else to provide you with a good or service, you have to be willing to offer something of value in return, in a voluntary trade. And if you can't afford to pay for what you need, then you have to ask politely for charity, knowing that the other person has a right to refuse. He has that right because his time and his money are his. To act otherwise — and acting otherwise is the whole essence of the case for further government intrusion — is to turn a civilized society into an uncivilized war of all against all. When the basic principle of government control is stated in individual terms — I need something, so I'm going to use force to take it from you — it sounds like what it is: a criminal act. So most people try to dress it up by stating it in collective terms. "We as a people decide what social benefits will be provided, what taxes people have to pay, and what terms insurance companies will be allowed to operate under." But this is actually worse. What this means is: the group has a right to dispose of the life, liberty, and property of the individual. That's a criminal act, too. The sacrifice of the individual to the collective is the basic atrocity committed by some of history's worst criminal regimes. This is the full meaning of Ayn Rand's dictum that "morality ends where a gun begins." A concern for morality in politics has to begin with the decision to renounce the use of force to dispose of the life and effort of others. Otherwise, all we have is a society-wide version of smash-and-grab, and the only debate is about who gets the loot and who ends up being the victim. Which is precisely what all of the current wrangling in the Senate amounts to. Susan Jacoby opened her debate by saying that "I genuinely don't understand why ordinary people…seem largely unmoved by the moral dimensions of this issue." Perhaps that's because, as the tea party movement has demonstrated, so many of us are moved by a moral issue that Jacoby seems to be studiously unaware of. Perhaps the "ordinary person's" idea of a "moral dimension" includes the principles of individual rights and liberty — and the fear that the left's rejection of those principles will eliminate all constraints on the power of the state. When it comes to morality in politics, there is no substitute for the moral vision — still radical, two centuries later — of our Founding Fathers: the subordination of government to the principle of individual rights. Anyone who pretends to talk about morality in public affairs without reference to that principle is perpetrating a monstrous fraud. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. JWR contributor Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of The Intellectual Activist and TIADaily.com. Comment by clicking here. Archives © 2009, Robert Tracinski

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