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What's going on around town?
Nov 11
Veteran's Day Parade in Leavenworth, KS. Meet at Leavenworth Courthouse around 4th and Walnut to decorate and ride on the float. Decorating will start at 9:30am. Parade starts at 10:30am.
Nov 14
Adult Stem Cells Saved My Life -- Education & Awareness Kansas City Celebration from noon-3:30pm at the Town Hall in Old Shawnee Town, 11600 Johnson Drive. Dr. David Prentice will be a speaker at the event. Kansas City BBQ will be served. Call 800-225-4008 to RSVP. Nov 16
Republican Women's Club Luncheon at the Riverfront Community Center in Leavenworth from 11:30am-1pm. RSVP's to the luncheon, which costs $8, may be made with Linda by calling 913-651-3176 and must be received by Nov 11th. Kirk Sours will be this month's guest speaker.
Nov 17
Hope for America Coalition meeting from 7-9pm at the Antioch Branch of the Johnson County Library.
Nov 23
Board Meeting for the Leavenworth County Republican Women's Club from 1pm-3pm in the Leavenworth Library.
Nov 24
Kansans for Life Monthly Meeting from 7-9pm at the Church of Christ on 10th Avenue in Leavenworth, KS.
Johnson County Young Republicans monthly meeting at Barley's Brewhaus in Shawnee from 7-8:30pm. For information, call Cara Freie at 816-233-6684.
Dec 2
Zeneith Booster's Club Meeting from 6:30-9am at Creekside Bar & Grill, 9916 Holmes road, KCMO.
Dec 7
Town Hall Meeting in the Lansing Community Center, 800 1st Terrace, Lansing, KS from 7pm-9pm. Guest speaker will be Kevin Yoder speaking on the Kansas Budget.
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 By What Authority
Trying to stay abreast of the news and all the pending legislation being thrust upon us is really getting to be a challenge. We are being bombarded from all directions, and everything has major implications to our way of life.
Congress is in a mad rush to ram through legislation upon the American people with total disregard of public opinion. The statement made by Rahm Emanuel early in Obama's administration about never letting a crisis go to waste (...that you can get everything done during a crisis that you otherwise could not do) is proving to be more true than anyone would have imagined.
Using this crisis mentality concept, we are seeing massive amounts of legislation being pushed through in an attempt to overwhelm both the opponents and the American people with information overload. This legislation includes mandated National Health Care, Cap and Trade, Climate Change legislation and a host of other unwanted programs. All of these programs are designed to chip away and erode the individual liberties and freedoms of the American people. After a close reading of these bills, you get the sense we are being assimilated into the collective, while we witness our revered Constitution being shredded and thrown upon the trash-heap of history.
Recently, a reporter/journalist asked a Democrat Congressman what Constitutional authority they were using to justify mandated health care, confiscating of the automobile industry, taking over the banks; the reply was a laugh and then he stated that most everything the Congress does is not allowed by the Constitution but that they do what they want anyway. This is totally irresponsibility on the part of the elected members of Congress and reflects their total contempt for the American people and their blatant quest for "power" and self glorification.
The Constitution was a carefully orchestrated document in which the people allowed the federal government certain limited and well defined powers. The problem we encounter today is that not only do the elected politicians not understand the Constitution but the average citizen has a very limited grasp of the Constitution as well (since we don't teach a good civics class any longer to our children).
It is time we educate ourselves on the Constitution and our Bill of Rights and then hold our elected officials accountable to the U.S. Constitution and the people.
John Bradford
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There are Many Threats Facing America Today
by: Rep. Connie O'Brien
Republican Friends; There are many threats facing America today. Islamic insurgents are still actively plotting the downfall of our great nation. Portions of our auto industry have become government-run entities. Our President and the Democrat-controlled Congress are still considering additional takeovers, bailouts and more stimulus spending.
The Democrat-controlled Congress is desperately trying to give government bureaucrats total control of your health care decisions. If they are successful, it will result in a loss of freedom and ultimately cost our grandchildren untold billions, possibly trillions, of dollars. The Democrats are pressing hard for passage of cap and trade legislation. Passage of this legislation would result in the most onerous tax ever levied against American businesses and the American people. With their huge appetite for power and absolute control, personal freedom and the time honored principles of free market competition are in danger of becoming things of the past. Tax more and spend more seems to be the mode of those who control Washington politics today.
The increased government intrusion into every aspect of our lives is moving at a frantic pace and now, in Kansas, our Democratic Governor, Mark Parkinson, is saying that he will consider raising our taxes to offset the continuing decline in state revenue. The last thing we need is to further burden our economy's recovery by adding to the huge tax burden currently being endured by Kansans.
I feel very fortunate to be serving in the Kansas House. The leadership that we have there is exceptional. Recently, Kansas House Speaker Mike O'Neal said, "Kansans in the private sector have rolled up their sleeves and are riding out this recession, having made gut-wrenching decisions affecting personnel and projects. State government can do the same and we can emerge from this recession better suited to compete with other states for jobs and growth industries. Permanent tax increases (they're always permanent) to address shortfalls in historic state spending in the waning months of the recession would be foolish. We are poised to exit the recession with a permanent reset of government over-spending and a competitive edge. Growth in revenues will allow us to reinvest in those programs that have demonstrated performance consistent with their mission and which are giving us a good return on investment, including education".
It has become common practice that once a tax is imposed it virtually never goes away. Parkinson, our Democratic governor is the administrative leader in Kansas now, but I'm hoping that legislative leaders like Kansas House Speaker Mike O'Neal can keep us on track to cut spending and balance our budget without raising anyone's taxes. If legislative leaders like O'Neal can garner the support needed to accomplish this we will have gone a long way towards making Kansas the kind of state where people will want to live, do business, prosper, and raise a family. If Republican majorities in the Kansas legislature can stick together, take the lead, resist tax increases, and balance our budget without raising taxes, that will make the Kansas elections in November of 2010 all the more exciting.
Balancing our budget by cutting wasteful spending while holding the line on taxes, now there's some hope, based on real solutions from real leaders, that you can believe in! |
Another Sermon on the Mount
by: Patricia Houser
October 15, 2009
Progressive Agenda - 101
Glen Beck, host of a Fox News Network Opinion show, and his staff have worked diligently to document the radical beliefs of many of this administrations staffers and others such as elected officials. He often shows video clips, audio sound bites, or printed text of portions of their speeches, which illuminate their true idealism. Many of these public servants have been shown to revere the likes of Karl Marx, Mao, Che, Castro, Chaves, and other communist/socialist ilk. I believe this goes beyond the idealism of Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, and Conservatives. I believe it would be a fair assumption to say most of these people would describe themselves as a Progressive. Many of these people, our public servants, are also members of any of a handful of non-governmental organizations. The agenda of these Progressive/Globalists is to work to unite all governments of the entire world under their control. They have evolved beyond mere Nation States. Progressives such as Henry Kissenger and H.W. Bush broached the subject nationally in the 1980s and 1990s. Recently others, have been calling for a "New World Order" and have moved to replace the US dollar as the World Standard for trade. They chip away at the Sovereignty of all nations. They are quietly working to assimilate the power necessary to achieve their goal, World Domination. Sounds like a over played plot for a B movie, but look at the world as a chessboard and how the pieces have been maneuvered into place to their success. They are still moving the pieces.
Let's look at:
World Economy
Most industrial nations are bankrupt. Once upon a time, nations that got into financial trouble simply built better mousetraps and earned more money. This drove the Globalists nuts for a long time. Now, our industries have been moved from our country to former third world countries to prevent us from earning our way out of debt. We are fast becoming a nation of grasscutters. Fewer and fewer value-added items are being manufactured in America today. This means fewer decent jobs. The health of the family, our basic unit of society, depended on those jobs to raise our children and make our system of government work. Decent jobs equate to hope. Hope defeats drugs and crime.
War
Warfare is rampant around the globe. American tax dollars currently fund most of the activities of the United Nations, yet that organization routinely refuses to help America in fighting terrorism and other instances of genocide, like Chad and Sudan.
Food
Many people starve to death everyday around the world. In most cases, the problem is not that there is not enough food. It is the system used to distribute the food that kills. The expanded use of biofuels is changing that. It is becoming more important to have a full tank of gas than to feed hungry people.
I could go on for a long time with the examples, but I think by now you get the idea. These Progressives believe they have us fattened up, hogtied, and ready for market. To that I say NO. We the people still have a say in this country. Get busy. Fight Socialistic legislation, organize, lobby, vote, or run for office. Turn the tide. May God help us and our country! |
45 Goals of the Communist Party in 1963
from the Congressional Record -- Appendix, pp. A34-A35 January 10, 1963
You May Be Shocked to Know:
You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As you read this, 46 years later, you should be shocked by the events that have played themselves out.
Communist Goals (1963) Congressional Record--Appendix, pp. A34-A35 January 10, 1963
Current Communist Goals EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Thursday, January 10, 1963 .
Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.
At Mrs. Nordman's request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following "Current Communist Goals," which she identifies as an excerpt from "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen:
[From "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen]
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, and policy-making positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, and healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture-- education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ["] united force ["] to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.
Note by Webmaster: The Congressional Record back this far has not been digitized and posted on the Internet.
It will probably be available at your nearest library that is a federal repository. Call them and ask them. Your college library is probably a repository. This is an excellent source of government records. You will find the Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto interesting at this point.
Sources are listed below.
- Microfilm: California State University at San Jose Clark Library,
Government Floor Phone (408)924-2770 Microfilm Call Number: J 11.R5
- Congressional Record, Vol. 109 88th Congress, 1st Session Appendix
Pages A1-A2842 Jan. 9-May 7, 1963 Reel 12
Does anything sound familiar to what we are living today? |
Healthcare is not a Right
by: Leonard Peikoff (1993)
updated with permission by Lin Z Introductory Note by Lin Zinser: In today's proposals for sweeping changes in the field of medicine, the term "socialized medicine" is never used. Instead we hear demands for "universal," "mandatory," "single-payer," and/or "comprehensive" systems. These demands aim to force one healthcare plan (sometimes with options) onto all Americans; it is a plan under which all medical services are paid for, and thus controlled, by government agencies. Sometimes, proponents call this "nationalized financing" or "nationalized health insurance." In a more honest day, it was called socialized medicine.
Most people who oppose socialized medicine do so on the grounds that it is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical; i.e., it is a noble idea--which just somehow does not work. I do not agree that socialized medicine is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical. Of course, it is impractical--it does not work--but I hold that it is impractical because it is immoral. This is not a case of noble in theory but a failure in practice; it is a case of vicious in theory and therefore a disaster in practice. I want to focus on the moral issue at stake. So long as people believe that socialized medicine is a noble plan, there is no way to fight it. You cannot stop a noble plan--not if it really is noble. The only way you can defeat it is to unmask it--to show that it is the very opposite of noble. Then at least you have a fighting chance.
What is morality in this context? The American concept of it is officially stated in the Declaration of Independence. It upholds man's unalienable, individual rights. The term "rights," note, is a moral (not just a political) term; it tells us that a certain course of behavior is right, sanctioned, proper, a prerogative to be respected by others, not interfered with--and that anyone who violates a man's rights is: wrong, morally wrong, unsanctioned, evil.
Now our only rights, the American viewpoint continues, are the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. That's all. According to the Founding Fathers, we are not born with a right to a trip to Disneyland, or a meal at McDonald's, or a kidney dialysis (nor with the 18th-century equivalent of these things). We have certain specific rights--and only these.
Why only these? Observe that all legitimate rights have one thing in common: they are rights to action, not to rewards from other people. The American rights impose no obligations on other people, merely the negative obligation to leave you alone. The system guarantees you the chance to work for what you want--not to be given it without effort by somebody else.
The right to life, e.g., does not mean that your neighbors have to feed and clothe you; it means you have the right to earn your food and clothes yourself, if necessary by a hard struggle, and that no one can forcibly stop your struggle for these things or steal them from you if and when you have achieved them. In other words: you have the right to act, and to keep the results of your actions, the products you make, to keep them or to trade them with others, if you wish. But you have no right to the actions or products of others, except on terms to which they voluntarily agree.
To take one more example: the right to the pursuit of happiness is precisely that: the right to the pursuit--to a certain type of action on your part and its result--not to any guarantee that other people will make you happy or even try to do so. Otherwise, there would be no liberty in the country: if your mere desire for something, anything, imposes a duty on other people to satisfy you, then they have no choice in their lives, no say in what they do, they have no liberty, they cannot pursue their happiness. Your "right" to happiness at their expense means that they become rightless serfs, i.e., your slaves. Your right to anything at others' expense means that they become rightless.
That is why the U.S. system defines rights as it does, strictly as the rights to action. This was the approach that made the U.S. the first truly free country in all world history--and, soon afterwards, as a result, the greatest country in history, the richest and the most powerful. It became the most powerful because its view of rights made it the most moral. It was the country of individualism and personal independence.
Today, however, we are seeing the rise of principled immorality in this country. We are seeing a total abandonment by the intellectuals and the politicians of the moral principles on which the U.S. was founded. We are seeing the complete destruction of the concept of rights. The original American idea has been virtually wiped out, ignored as if it had never existed. The rule now is for politicians to ignore and violate men's actual rights, while arguing about a whole list of rights never dreamed of in this country's founding documents--rights which require no earning, no effort, no action at all on the part of the recipient.
You are entitled to something, the politicians say, simply because it exists and you want or need it--period. You are entitled to be given it by the government. Where does the government get it from? What does the government have to do to private citizens--to their individual rights--to their real rights--in order to carry out the promise of showering free services on the people?
The answers are obvious. The newfangled rights wipe out real rights--and turn the people who actually create the goods and services involved into servants of the state. The Russians tried this exact system for many decades. Unfortunately, we have not learned from their experience. Yet the meaning of socialism is clearly evident in any field at all--you don't need to think of health care as a special case; it is just as apparent if the government were to proclaim a universal right to food, or to a vacation, or to a haircut. I mean: a right in the new sense: not that you are free to earn these things by your own effort and trade, but that you have a moral claim to be given these things free of charge, with no action on your part, simply as handouts from a benevolent government.
How would these alleged new rights be fulfilled? Take the simplest case: you are born with a moral right to hair care, let us say, provided by a loving government free of charge to all who want or need it. What would happen under such a moral theory?
Haircuts are free, like the air we breathe, so some people show up every day for an expensive new styling, the government pays out more and more, barbers revel in their huge new incomes, and the profession starts to grow ravenously, bald men start to come in droves for free hair implantations, a school of fancy, specialized eyebrow pluckers develops--it's all free, the government pays. The dishonest barbers are having a field day, of course--but so are the honest ones; they are working and spending like mad, trying to give every customer his heart's desire, which is a millionaire's worth of special hair care and services--the government starts to scream, the budget is out of control. Suddenly directives erupt: we must limit the number of barbers, we must limit the time spent on haircuts, we must limit the permissible type of hair styles; bureaucrats begin to split hairs about how many hairs a barber should be allowed to split. A new computerized office of records filled with inspectors and red tape shoots up; some barbers, it seems, are still getting too rich, they must be getting more than their fair share of the national hair, so barbers have to start applying for Certificates of Need in order to buy razors, while peer review boards are established to assess every stylist's work, both the dishonest and the overly honest alike, to make sure that no one is too bad or too good or too busy or too unbusy. Etc. In the end, there are lines of wretched customers waiting for their chance to be routinely scalped by bored, hog-tied haircutters some of whom remember dreamily the old days when somehow everything was so much better.
Do you think the situation would be improved by having hair-care cooperatives organized by the government?--having them engage in managed competition, managed by the government, in order to buy haircut insurance from companies controlled by the government?
If this is what would happen under government-managed hair care, what else can possibly happen--it is already starting to happen--under the idea of health care as a right? Health care in the modern world is a complex, scientific, technological service. How can anybody be born with a right to such a thing?
Under the American system you have a right to health care if you can pay for it, i.e., if you can earn it by your own action and effort. But nobody has the right to the services of any professional individual or group simply because he wants them and desperately needs them. The very fact that he needs these services so desperately is the proof that he had better respect the freedom, the integrity, and the rights of the people who provide them.
You have a right to work, not to rob others of the fruits of their work, not to turn others into sacrificial, rightless animals laboring to fulfill your needs.
Some of you may ask here: But can people afford health care on their own? Even leaving aside the present government-inflated medical prices, the answer is: Certainly people can afford it. Where do you think the money is coming from right now to pay for it all--where does the government get its fabled unlimited money? Government is not a productive organization; it has no source of wealth other than confiscation of the citizens' wealth, through taxation, deficit financing or the like.
But, you may say, isn't it the "rich" who are really paying the costs of medical care now--the rich, not the broad bulk of the people? As has been proved time and again, there are not enough rich anywhere to make a dent in the government's costs; it is the vast middle class in the U.S. that is the only source of the kind of money that national programs like government health care require. A simple example of this is the fact that all of these new programs rest squarely on the backs not of Big Business, but of small businessmen who are struggling in today's economy merely to stay alive and in existence. Under any socialized regime, it is the "little people" who do most of the paying for it--under the senseless pretext that "the people" can't afford such and such, so the government must take over. If the people of a country truly couldn't afford a certain service--as e.g. in Somalia--neither, for that very reason, could any government in that country afford it, either.
Some people can't afford medical care in the U.S. But they are necessarily a small minority in a free or even semi-free country. If they were the majority, the country would be an utter bankrupt and could not even think of a national medical program. As to this small minority, in a free country they have to rely solely on private, voluntary charity. Yes, charity, the kindness of the doctors or of the better off--charity, not right, i.e. not their right to the lives or work of others. And such charity, I may say, was always forthcoming in the past in America. The advocates of Medicaid and Medicare under LBJ did not claim that the poor or old in the '60's got bad care; they claimed that it was an affront for anyone to have to depend on charity.
But the fact is: You don't abolish charity by calling it something else. If a person is getting health care for nothing, simply because he is breathing, he is still getting charity, whether or not any politician, lobbyist or activist calls it a "right." To call it a Right when the recipient did not earn it is merely to compound the evil. It is charity still--though now extorted by criminal tactics of force, while hiding under a dishonest name.
As with any good or service that is provided by some specific group of men, if you try to make its possession by all a right, you thereby enslave the providers of the service, wreck the service, and end up depriving the very consumers you are supposed to be helping. To call "medical care" a right will merely enslave the doctors and thus destroy the quality of medical care in this country, as socialized medicine has done around the world, wherever it has been tried, including Canada (I was born in Canada and I know a bit about that system first hand).
I would like to clarify the point about socialized medicine enslaving the doctors. Let me quote here from an article I wrote a few years ago: "Medicine: The Death of a Profession."
In medicine, above all, the mind must be left free. Medical treatment involves countless variables and options that must be taken into account, weighed, and summed up by the doctor's mind and subconscious. Your life depends on the private, inner essence of the doctor's function: it depends on the input that enters his brain, and on the processing such input receives from him. What is being thrust now into the equation? It is not only objective medical facts any longer.
Today, in one form or another, the following also has to enter that brain: 'The DRG administrator [in effect, the hospital or HMO man trying to control costs] will raise hell if I operate, but the malpractice attorney will have a field day if I don't--and my rival down the street, who heads the local PRO [Peer Review Organization], favors a CAT scan in these cases, I can't afford to antagonize him, but the CON boys disagree and they won't authorize a CAT scanner for our hospital--and besides the FDA prohibits the drug I should be prescribing, even though it is widely used in Europe, and the IRS might not allow the patient a tax deduction for it, anyhow, and I can't get a specialist's advice because the latest Medicare rules prohibit a consultation with this diagnosis, and maybe I shouldn't even take this patient, he's so sick--after all, some doctors are manipulating their slate of patients, they accept only the healthiest ones, so their average costs are coming in lower than mine, and it looks bad for my staff privileges.' Would you like your case to be treated this way--by a doctor who takes into account your objective medical needs and the contradictory, unintelligible demands of some ninety different state and Federal government agencies? If you were a doctor could you comply with all of it? Could you plan or work around or deal with the unknowable? But how could you not? Those agencies are real and they are rapidly gaining total power over you and your mind and your patients.
In this kind of nightmare world, if and when it takes hold fully, thought is helpless; no one can decide by rational means what to do. A doctor either obeys the loudest authority--or he tries to sneak by unnoticed, bootlegging some good health care occasionally or, as so many are doing now, he simply gives up and quits the field. (The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought, Ayn Rand, NAL Books, 1988, pp. 306-307)
Any mandatory and comprehensive plan will finish off quality medicine in this country--because it will finish off the medical profession. It will deliver doctors bound hands and feet to the mercies of the bureaucracy.
The only hope--for the doctors, for their patients, for all of us--is for the doctors to assert a moral principle. I mean: to assert their own personal individual rights--their real rights in this issue--their right to their lives, their liberty, their property, their pursuit of happiness.
The Declaration of Independence applies to the medical profession too. We must reject the idea that doctors are slaves destined to serve others at the behest of the state.
Doctors, Ayn Rand wrote, are not servants of their patients. They are "traders, like everyone else in a free society, and they should bear that title proudly, considering the crucial importance of the services they offer."
The battle against socialized medicine depends on the doctors speaking out against it--not only on practical grounds, but, first of all, on moral grounds. The doctors must defend themselves and their own interests as a matter of solemn justice, upholding a moral principle, the first moral principle: self-preservation.
Concluding Note by Lin Zinser: In addition, we must join the doctors in their defense and in our own. Hospital administrators, nurses, physical therapists, health insurance companies, and patients must speak out against these plans, on moral grounds, as a matter of justice. If the doctors become slaves, so will we all.
Leonard Peikoff is a philosopher living in Southern California, and is the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute, and the author of The Ominous Parallels and of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, the definitive presentation of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. He is currently at work on his third book, The DIM Hypothesis. |
Leavenworth County Republican Party Leadership
First District
James C. Tellefson.................913-651-3853
Second District & Board Chair
Clyde Graeber......................913-682-4514
Third District
John C. Flower.....................913-634-0061
State Representatives
Kansas House of Representatives, 39th District
Kansas House of Representatives, 42nd District
National Representatives
US House of Representatives
US Senate
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