You can always get what you want...

The Republican pundits and blogsters are all aghast at the passage of healthcare reform. I guess that they are irritated that the record for biggest entitlement increase in generations is now held by the Democrats. Previously the Repubs had held the title with the Medicare Prescription Drug benefit. Those pesky Dems have taken the lead and don't seem to be looking back. And now O'Reilly and Hannity drone on and on about the eviscerated Constitution. Interesting that there wasn't much talk from the neocon mouthpieces of what the Patriot Act did to the document. They are born again constitutionalists now that the Democrats are in charge.

The great thing about "Health Care Reform" is that there is no money to pay for it. I cheer the passage of any bill that hastens the bankruptcy of the federal government. The only way guaranteed to slow government growth/power is bankruptcy. Most folks fail to understand that government is a giant leech on the neck of the economy. There is no economy positive thing that government does. Fortunately for us, the pillagers currently in power don't have the sense of an untrained billy goat. They will eat everything until there is no more food. One can hope that then they starve.

This has happened before. The governments of France, Great Britain, Rome, the USSR and numerous other great powers lost their collective minds and over pillaged their peoples until there was no more stuff to take. Then they shrunk and lost power. This is the inevitable cycle with human depravity being what it is and government of humans being what it is. The Republicans usually understand that the best way to properly steal is to do it slowly so as not to kill off the golden goose. This is the main debate on the Hill: how to pillage properly for maintenance of long term rewards at the expense of those actually working.

Some of you may say that the above is just my opinion, I am a reactionary and that I fail to see the big picture yada yada yada... To you all, I would point out that 1 Samuel 8 states clearly what central governments do. If you don't like 1 Samuel take a look at the writings of Frederic Bastiat, Murray Rothbard, Frederich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, or Hans Herman Hoppe.

So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, "You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have."....Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."

Ask yourself if this is where we are at now? The worst of both worlds is at hand in our egalitarian democracy. We have a strong central government that is capable of taking whatever it wants with or without (quite obviously) the consent of the governed. Every four years the people cry out for a new president that will give them what the other governments around us have. We begged the government for security and got the Patriot Act. We begged the government for jobs and got the Stimulus. We begged the government for drugs and healthcare and we got it. Just like Israel, we get what we ask for each time at the cost of eroding our freedoms and national character. This last election cycle we sold our freedoms for the paltry sum of "Change." I would say that we got what we asked for this week.