"We Hope the Hammer Won't Be Necessary"

No, this isn't another war-related story. Turns out that the State of California is trying out fascist tactics rather than the socialist ones so prevalent during the previous administration. The WSJ has a good editorial detailing the proposed new "voluntary" prescription drug plan that our masters in Sacramento have unveiled to rob pharmaceutical companies.

Unfortunately, the free-market alternative the editorial's author proposes is very watered down and takes no moral stand (except on some ridiculous cost-benefit analysis). To make a true impact we have to first establish that the proper purpose of government is to protect each and every individual citizen from the use of force, not to use it against them. ("Hammering" them as our lovely Czar of Health and Human Services so quaintly puts it.) Then we can go on to challenge the notion that the government has the job of protecting us from ourselves (and thereby violating our rights) at which point we could call for a full repeal of all the regulatory bodies like the FDA, and of all preventive legislation such as the Anti-Trust and the Sarbanes-Oxley Acts.