The True Face of Liberalism

If you did not see On the Record with Greta van Susteren on Fox News on the evening of August 20, 2009, you missed something very special. On that program, the true face of liberalism showed itself.

Fortunately, in this age of the Internet and YouTube, you have a chance to see it. Here it is, preserved for all posterity, or at least until either YouTube goes away or the Fox News lawyers have their say.

The setting is a debate about the recent comments by Whole Foods Market, Inc. CEO John Mackey's recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal regarding his opposition to President Obama's medical care reform bill.

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction -- toward less government control and more individual empowerment....

Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care -- to equal access to doctors, medicines, and hospitals..... A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food, or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America.

Mr. Mackey also explains how such a right does not exist in any other country either, especially in those countries with government-controlled medical care systems, where governmental restrictions actually block individuals from exercising their actual right to seek the treatments that they desire. He continues with a short (and correct) assessment regarding the current state of affairs in the United States where the vast majority of our medical problems are the result of self-inflicted unhealthy lifestyle choices; in other words, our illnesses are in large part because each of us is not owning up to the responsibility to live in a more healthy manner.

Sounds like my kind of guy. Goes right along with what I have been saying for years. If there was a Whole Foods Market near me (there isn't), I might have to start shopping there just to support his views. (Though I doubt I'd ever get past the fact that I could get essentially the same merchandise much cheaper at Walmart.)

Mr. Mackey does not just criticize the President's plan. He lays out succinctly
eight reforms that would dramatically improve the ability of everyone to have better access to medical care. I not only do not disagree with any of these eight reforms -- I would wholeheartedly endorse all of them. The problem, as it were, with these ideas is that they fly in the face of the whole socialist concept of taking over the 'healthcare' industry. And Greta van Susteren was able to find someone who could not prevent the true face of liberalism from showing.

Fox News has a transcript of this encounter on Greta's show if you'd like to read it. But the video is so much more revealing, as it is the attitude and emotions of the liberal opposition to Mr. Mackey that is impressive. This gentleman's (and I use that term loosely) name is Russell Mokhiber, and I want you to pay attention to his voice and his facial expressions. Listen to the venom in his voice; look at the sneer and the scowl on his face; note that he does not smile nor even come close to smiling during this entire segment. He gets into a shouting match with Greta over this issue. And why? Simply because Mr. Mackey's editorial dares to oppose his and the liberals' ideal solution of the government controlled single payer system.

Mr. Mokhiber is the epitome, the classic example of the face of liberalism, driven by anger, seeing no joy in anything, being opposed vehemently to anything that deviates even slightly from what liberalism demands, loudly and angrily shouting down any voice of dissenting opinion.

Amazingly, Greta even calls him on this, chiding him that his only issue is that Mr. Mackey disagrees with him, and criticizing him for not seeing the good Mr. Mackey has done for his employees and the fact that he made concrete proposals for reform and was not calling for the maintenance of the status quo. (This is amazing because Greta van Susteren is a registered Democrat, but is apparently one of the few Democrats willing to give consideration to the other side of an argument.) Mr. Mokhiber gives Mr. Mackey no credit for Greta's points, as Mr. Mackey's 'heresy' cannot be tolerated.

I will take issue with Mr. Mokhiber on a couple of other issues.

He states that "the majority of doctors" now see single payer as the "only way" to fix the system. His debate opponent, Crystal Jones, says, "That's false. I want to see a source for that." I'm with her. Don't make that kind of assertion without hard evidence. I haven't yet run into any other doctor who is anything less than scared spitless about what ObamaCare is going to do to us.

Mr. Mokhiber also states:

...and 60 Americans are dying every day because of lack of health insurance -- when you cross over into Canada and that number is zero....

Is this the same Canada that Mr. Mackey reports has 830,000 people on a waiting list to be admitted to a hospital or receive treatment for their illnesses? (Though that's better than England where there are 1,800,000 people on the list.)

Now let's take on that "60 Americans are dying every day for lack of health insurance" bit. If one compares the 5-year survival rate for cancer patients in the US vs Europe, one will find some sobering statistics. In the US, 66.3% of men and 62.9% of women survive for five years, while in Europe (collectively) the rates are 47.3% for men and 55.8% for women. (Intriguingly, the rates for the UK, whose system so enthralls Obama adviser Tom Daschle, is amongst the lowest in Western Europe.)

Now, the number of people in the US who develop cancer each year is 766,130 men and 713,220 women (taken from an American Cancer Society PowerPoint presentation linked above). I won't bore you with the math, but if you apply government-controlled-healthcare-system European survival rates to the American numbers and figure out the excess mortality, that would result in 145,568 more men and 50,639 more women dying of cancer each year -- or 196,207 more American deaths, for an average of 537 deaths per day. This is 895% higher than what Mr. Mokhiber has his panties all in a wad about. And this is just taking cancer mortality into account; it doesn't consider cardiovascular disease or diabetes or any other cause of death, most of which would also increase under a European-style single-payer system.

So is it really that "60 Americans are dying every day because of lack of health insurance" that is what bothers Mr. Mokhiber? If it is, then he needs to educate himself about the reality of the situation so he'll know what to really worry about. However, I think that pointing this out to him would not alter his position, as he is using his statistic merely as a emotional debating tactic.

And that showing him data that his position would lead to more Americans dying would not change his position reveals even more clearly just how ugly the true face of liberalism really is.