Loyal to Liberty

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Alan Keyes

In the speeches I have given over the years supporting the pro-life cause, I have often pointed out that the calculated disregard for innocent life first aimed at babes in the womb would eventually claim the lives of the elderly, the infirm and anyone else judged to represent what the Nazis called "life unworthy of life." Once "quality of life" replaces the God ordained right to life as the criterion that assures the safety of the innocent, no one can live free of fear except those who are certain the shifting winds of popular esteem will never shift against them.

A new report from WND's Whistleblower magazine makes clear the likelihood that the Obama faction's proposed government takeover of the health care system will subject the American people to the terrifying consequence that I (and other pro-life advocates) have predicted. It will erect a totalitarian bureaucracy empowered to exile the elderly (and eventually others whose lives are judged to cost more than they are worth) to a hellish medical gulag, bereft of the choices that today allow many to determine for themselves the moment at which they surrender with dignity to the inevitable prospect of their mortality. "If this dire end-of life scenario sounds too awful to be possible, that is only because the reality of Obamacare has not been sufficiently reported. For this is not a fantasy - it is what is already occurring in other 'civilized' nations, including Canada and Britain, that have adopted the same government-run system."

Of course, it doesn't require much thought to realize that the sentence to death without dignity won't fall equally upon everyone. People who are part of the power structure of the dominant political faction will live in a different reality, like that which the politicians even now are setting apart for themselves and the people they love or favor. As gatekeepers who control access to this realm of privilege, they will have the opportunity to build and secure the political power base from which to manipulate the hopes and fears of those they wish to win over or intimidate.

Though today the dividing line between care and neglect seems to be defined by age and infirmity, once the system of political and bureaucratic control is firmly ensconced, it will be defined by factional favoritism. Those in good standing with the factional bosses will be treated one way. Those unwilling to tow their line will live in one administrative gulag or another.

Christ said "the poor, we will always have with us." Human societies have ever seen divisions between those who have less and those who have more. Contrary to the lying rhetoric used to promote the 'universal health care' shibboleth, the Obama faction's proposed totalitarian takeover of the health system won't eliminate such division. Instead America will move from a world in which less and more reflect relative economic status, to a world in which the ambition and greed of powerful factional elites will be the determining factor. A competition for the favor and patronage of powerful individuals will replace the competition for dollars.

In light of this fact, Americans need to ask themselves which they would rather be: people who work for a company that cleans people's houses, whose status in life in many respects depends on the company's ability to please its clientele; or people forced to be the personal house servants of arrogant, self-serving elites whose status in life depends on the interests, passions and whims of those elites. It's one thing to watch Oprah Winfrey on TV. It's another to be part of the entourage whose fate depends on the calculations and moods of the one who controls participation in her world of special privileges.

From being a society where status relates to economic success, we will become a society where status derives from personal dependency. We will exchange the insecurities and risks involved in the one for the certain servility and slavish fear of giving offense characteristic of the other. (I realize that when working for others we always have to manage our relations with our boss or supervisor. But when people live under a totalitarian regime there are no avenues of dignified retreat from that servility. The political and bureaucratic masters determine whether you can work, start a business, buy a house, or access a doctor or a hospital. Offend them, and you have no recourse but to languish in the gulags they will have created to punish their enemies and cow everyone else.)

The power hungry elite shilling for the transformation to totalitarianism in health care and other sectors of American life shrewdly emphasize and exaggerate the shortcomings of the way of life that respects individual rights and private enterprise. They promise a world without shortcomings, without deprivation, where everyone will have equal access to all the goods, all the hopes, all the sought for validations of worth and identity. But human contrivance will never produce such a world. We will always have to risk. Some will always have more, some less. The only realistic promise one human being can make to another is a society in which avenues consistent with moral dignity always remain open to character, discipline, talent and ability- so that no one willing to strive will be forced to live without hope of a better life. The promises of wily demagogues like Obama may seem for a moment more substantial than this- until we realize that in their world the fulfillment of every promise depends on the favored elites who control the reins of power. On the other hand, the fulfillment of freedom's promise depends on each and every one of us. As long as we refuse to give up on ourselves, we can hold on to the hope even the dimmest flame of life still represents. For like the still, small voice of conscience, that dim flame of life signifies the will and presence of the greatest power there is- the One who set the stars in motion and raised the mountains high, and who seconds the motion of our existence as long as we draw breath, and even, at long last, when it returns to Him forever.

Dr. Keyes contrasts the depths of despair awaiting us under Obama's America with the glorious hope America has traditionally embraced and which inspired generations and nations.