Government is not necessarily the problem?

I have heard that as much as one-third of health care costs are for administration. Paperwork.

I don't know now where I heard that or if it is even true, but I saw a doctor being interviewed on TV last night (can't remember his name, but he used to be Obama's physician) and he said that he had two full-time employees whose job was just to fill out paperwork for the insurance companies.

Another thing he said, which I found very interesting, was that the time-consuming part was not really the government Medicare stuff, as one might think, but the private insurance forms. He also said the government/medicare pretty much left him alone, and that the harassment and pressuring to lower his standards of patient care were coming from private insurance companies too, and not the government.

Well, if true, that is an eye-opener because I had always assumed that any nightmarish paperwork and regulations would be coming from the government. Not so, this doctor says, and he also says (because of that fact) he has no fears of a national health care program run by the government.

I am still digesting that, and, of course, one of my digestive enzymes is that he was formerly Obama's doctor, so I'm guessing the good doctor was born loving big government. Still, it is food for thought. I may be won over to this national health care thing yet. Still many questions to be answered.

The "L" word

The word "liberal" originally was used to describe a person who espoused the political philosophy that championed individual rights and freedoms. It comes from the Latin "Liber" meaning free, or "liberty".

Honest. That's true. I just looked it up.

Much has changed.

The mark of a liberal thinker today is one who believes in the government taking care of the individual.

The mark of the liberal in olden days (like before the 1970s) was, according to the dictionary-encyclopedia that came with my computer, a willingness to think new thoughts and a willingness to question the old ways things had been done in the past. The word "progressive" was often used for such a liberal thinker, meaning such person was in favor of "progress" and betterment - defined as progressively more and more individual freedom and personal independence.

The idea was that the liberal was not afraid of change, as the old stuck-in-the-mud conservatives were. The goal of the liberal was ever more individual liberty (from the government, one assumes) through progressive new ideas. The thought of the individual citizen being subjugated by a government, or TO a government, was unthinkable to a liberal.

What used to be a quest for equal opportunity for all men as supported by liberals of old, has today "evolved" into a quest for equal access to material things. Before, the desire was for equal access to a good education, equal access to jobs. To a liberal, equality meant opening doors of opportunity.

When did that change? When did liberalism (which I would have been proud to have been a part of) change to material "things" being given to certain citizens (whom the liberals of today label "disadvantaged") instead of teaching them to fish and making sure they had equal access to the big lake?

I'm not talking about the sick and people with disabilities. I'm talking about people who just don't have a high income.

Today, the liberal no longer fights for equal opportunity and equal access. Rather he is concerned with finding ways to get "stuff" for people who don't have as much "stuff" as other people have. This "stuff" is taken, of course, from people who HAVE "stuff". Sorta like Robin Hood, don't you know.

Am I the only one in the world who thinks this is wrong?

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need

According the author of this blog title, Karl Marx, every person should contribute to the society they live in to the best of his ability. Everyone should consume FROM that society only what he needs (not in proportion to his contribution.)

That doesn't sound bad. Communism is deceptively attractive to the people in any society who feel "left out"; who feel they never seem to be getting a piece of the pie. It is easy to look for quick fixes. It is easy to blame others for your own failures or for where you are in your life.

The French communist Morelly wrote 'way back in 1755:

"I. Nothing in society will belong to anyone, either as a personal possession or as capital goods, except the things for which the person has immediate use, for either his needs, his pleasures, or his daily work.
II. Every citizen will be a public man, sustained by, supported by, and occupied at the public expense.
III. Every citizen will make his particular contribution to the activities of the community according to his capacity, his talent and his age; it is on this basis that his duties will be determined, in conformity with the distributive laws."

Even the New Testament seems to teach the validity of the above concept.

"32. And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.
33. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all.
34. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold,
35. And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need."

The above is, of course, at the heart and soul of socialism, or, more specifically, Communism. The title to this post, in fact, is probably the most famous quote that ever came out of Karl Marx' mouth.

And yet, through the years, we have seen there is something lacking in this seemingly utopian prospect of how people should live and interact with one another.

If you understand what that ingredient is that is missing from the communist credo, then you at the same time will understand why the United States of America, until recent history, has been a consistent producer of excellence rather than mediocrity throughout its relatively short history. Western Europe, Notably England and Germany, too.

Have you ever noticed how some theories look very good and reasonable on paper and sound very good in speeches, but when they are tried out in real life they just don't produce the expected end result? This is because something has been overlooked in the formula.

I ask you to take a look at two neighbors: North Korea and China. The one has a history of determined text book communism and the other has had a recent epiphany and no longer follows the road of intransigent subjugation of the personal spirit. I never thought I would say that of "Communist Red China" but it is true today.

China has discovered what the USA discovered in its early beginnings. But China has the advantage of knowing the mistakes the USA made along the way.

At the same time China is going through the birth pangs of a vibrant new future - surely within just a few generations from being the new leader of the world - at the same time we see the USA forgetting the thing that caused its own greatness.

Also ironically, the fall of the USA is due to its abandonment of what it once knew and practiced so well, and its not-so-slow conversion to the silly, always-failed, past forays into socialism. The USA is a little behind its European counterparts in this foolish slide into socialism, but catching up fast.