"Let Him Die" Demagoguery

There was an incident at a Republican Party Presidential Debate yesterday that some dishonest demagogues on the left have decided to twist beyond recognition for the sake of a few rhetorical political points.

At the CNN Tea Party debate, Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul what he would have us do if a 30 year old healthy person were to freely choose not to have health insurance, but ends up needing 6 months of intensive care. should we let him die?

A couple of hecklers in the audience shouted, "Yes," and some demagogues on the left want to brand the whole of the Republican Party with this answer. Thus proving that deceptive misrepresentation is also a key moral value of the left.

There is a new web site, lethimdie.com that deceptively edits and presents the events of the debate. Their commercial is a carefully edited version of what really happened that aims to paint all Republicans with the heckled comments of a few in the audience.

Imagine somebody trying to brand all atheists with an answer to certain anti-theist (e.g., that the teaching of religion to a child should be considered abuse and thus be made criminal) might cheer at a debate.

If you want to see the full context of the question and the answer, you can watch thus video: Let Him Die

The correct conservative answer to that question - and the answer that Ron Paul gave and was applauded for by the vast majority of the audience - was not "let him die" but "let us provide a more cost effective and humane form of care than a government bureaucracy can provide."

First, because government tax-payer funded health care will become the feeding trough of drug companies and corporate hospitals lobbying the government to pay more and more money for less and less care. These wealthy corporate organizations can afford to invest millions of dollars for tweaks and adjustments to the red tape, each of which drains another $1.00 out if each of our pockets, bundles it into a big package, and deposits $100 million into the corporate bank account. Only, all of those $1.00 additions are adding up to a health care system that Americans cannot afford.

Second, because private care helps to build a community. Previously, as Paul said, churches took care of this function. And though some of my atheist readers may loathe to read this, churches were an early form of health insurance. People came together in a congregation, and when somebody in the congregation cane upon rough times, the others stepped in to help out. This is something atheists often lack, much to their detriment. There are a whole lot of reasons for going back to the concept of local, community care for those who need it.

So, no, the conservative answer is not "let him die". The conservative answer is, we should trust his care to a community that can provide a higher quality, more cost effective and compassionate form of care than any red-tape bureaucracy designed to rob each of us for the sake of the wealthy can provide.

This is the conservative answer.

It is not my answer. A couple of the problems that I see with this answer is that communities of this form tend to be all of one economic class - so poor communities form poor congregations with limited resources. Another is that many of these communities adopt a strong "us" versus "them" mentality, and often exclude - sometimes violently - people that the congregation counts as "them" - Jews, blacks, atheists, Catholics (for a protest group), Protestants (for a catholic group). Increased care for those within the community often comes with hostility often erupting into violence against those outside the community.

But, I hold that these are issues that social scientists need to research.

Another issue that left-leaning individuals with a sense of integrity and honesty should confront are left-leaning demagogues who want to distort and twist the issues because it gains political points. An eagerness to win elections by deceiving and manipulating the voters is not a value that people of honesty and integrity should be willing to tolerate.