According to the progressive playbook, if Florida Gov. Rick Scott had not declined an unaffordable expansion of Medicaid, Charlene Dill wouldn’t have died suddenly from a heart condition.
The Internet is rife with arguments over the details of this tragic case. Questions include, What did Ms. Dill die from? What is Ms. Dill’s family situation? What private and public options were available to Ms. Dill? Which did she pursue? (RELATED: The Democrats’ last chance)
But it’s worth asking a different kind of question: Is the goal of government the end of tragedy? Should it be? Could it be?
The left certainly thinks so.
“This 32-year-old Florida woman is dead because her state refused to expand Medicaid.”
“Meet the late Charlene Dill, sentenced to death by Republican obstruction.”
“Democrats need to start blaming the GOP for the death of Charlene Dill.”
From Kissimmee to Newtown, we learn over and over again that tragedy is still here, that chaos isn’t the stuff of history books — and whether it’s a heart attack or a massacre, we simply can’t regulate away pain.
Even still, the left thrives off of the idea. Car crash? New law. Suicide? New law. Hurricane? New law. Heart attack?
There may already be laws and programs in place to help or outlaw the situation — as was very likely the case in Florida, as was definitely the case in Newtown, and on and on — but that won’t worry the evangelists of government, who want more, more, more.
Almost there, they urge. Just one more law. Just one fewer gun. Just one more expansion of government services, and salvation will be at hand.
“Charlene Dill is the new face of the Medicaid gap, caused by the refusal of Republican governors and legislators to accept free money from the federal government to provide coverage to more people,” one particularly inept blogger carped. “Free money” — the atheist’s manna from heaven. (VIDEO: This Democratic Senate wannabe just picked a fight with a mother who has cancer)
An interesting experiment is asking how much. How high should tax rates be? How expansive should government health care be? How draconian should gun control be? The more-honest progressives of the university might have an answer — “100 percent,” “100 percent,” “100 percent” — but for the politicians, the answer is always just “more.” “More,” “more,” “more.” (RELATED: The Washington Post is pretty worried about the people Obamacare hurts, but not why you’d think)
And we’ve got news: It’s never going to be enough. Not enough government to appease its evangelists, and more pertinent to the rest of society, not enough government to fix that wonderful, tragic, impressive and flawed thing that is our lives.
“The root difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals of today is that Conservatives take account of the whole man, while the Liberals tend to look only at the material side of man’s nature,” Sen. Barry Goldwater wrote in 1960. “The Conservative believes that man is, in part, an economic, an animal creature; but that he is also a spiritual creature with spiritual needs and spiritual desires. What is more, these needs and desires reflect the superior side of man’s nature, and thus take precedence over his economic wants. … Liberals, on the other hand, — in the name of a concern for “human beings” — regard the satisfaction of economic wants as the dominant mission of society. They are, moreover, in a hurry. So that their characteristic approach is to harness the society’s political and economic forces into a collective effort to compel ‘progress.'”
Mr. Goldwater wasn’t the first person to come up with this thought, but he succinctly summarizes an important point: the left is materialist. They would bend our entire country — its industries, businesses, individuals — to the support of a government that will use the resources it takes to yolk the entire country — its industries, businesses, individuals — under its protections, as decided by it. For our safety.
On Jan. 8, 1964, shortly after he defeated Mr. Goldwater in a nasty, underhanded election, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s announced his “War on Poverty.” Trillions of dollars, thousands of bureaucrats, hundreds of programs and 50 years later, we’re told Ms. Dill died because there wasn’t “more” — that implausible, unprovable, illusive government cure-all for the wrong disease.
And in 50 more years, hundreds more programs, thousands more bureaucrats and trillions more dollars, we’ll hear more of the same.
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