Activism

In the coming year I hope to be much more vocal in the cultural debate, and have set myself goals of writing 12 editorials, 3 LTE's and 52 comments on public media websites by the end of 2009. (The editorial goal may prove to be too ambitious, but it seems better to set my sights too high rather than too low.)

I've joined Diana Hsieh's enormously helpful and motivational OActivists email list as an essential tool toward achieving these activism goals and would urge other like-minded people to do so too.

Via that list comes this story on the Massachusetts Health Care system being proposed as a model for a national system. In response I wrote the following LTE and comment:

LTE

I was initially dismayed to see a health care system which routinely destroys individual rights, increases costs and rations supply, lauded as a “model” for the nation to follow. (Mass. Health plan has national appeal, Dec 19). But my shock quickly wore off when I remembered how for decades the press uncritically lavished praise on Lenin and Stalin’s “noble experiment”. We all remember how that turned out, don’t we?

Comment:

I was initially dismayed to see a health care system which routinely destroys individual rights, increases costs and rations supply, lauded as a “model” for the nation to follow. But my shock quickly wore off when I remembered how for decades the press uncritically lavished praise on Lenin and Stalin’s “noble experiment”. We all remember how that turned out, don’t we?

PS For a more critical look at the Mass. system, see http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-fall/mandatory-health-insurance.asp