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Jewish World Review
June 17, 2009 / 25 Sivan 5769
Live Free or Die
By
Walter Williams
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"Live Free or Die" is the title of author and JWR columnist Mark
Steyn's speech at Hillsdale College, reproduced in Imprimis (April 2009), a
Hillsdale publication that's free for the asking. Canadian born, now living
in New Hampshire, Steyn has had firsthand experience with socialist tyranny
in his home country that is rapidly becoming a part of America. Commenting
on one of his run-ins with Canada's human rights commissions, Steyn points
how it might seem bizarre to find the progressive left making common cause
with radical Islam. One half of that alliance is pro-gay, pro-feminist
secularists and the other half is homophobic, misogynist theocrats. Steyn
argues what they have in common overrides their differences, namely, "Both
the secular Big Government progressives and the political Islam recoil from
the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted to operate
within his own societal space, assume his responsibilities, and exploit his
potential."
I doubt whether there are many Americans who think Congress has
either the right or competency to choose where they live, what clothes they
wear or what cars they drive. Yet many Americans stand ready to allow
Congress to decide what doctors they go to and what treatments they receive.
We forget that once we have government-sponsored health care, it can be used
to justify almost any restraint on liberty. That's the justification behind
helmet and seatbelt laws. Britain is well along the road toward totally
controlling health care. Steyn says, "Under Britain's National Health
Service, for example, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for
heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee
replacements. Patricia Hewitt, the British Health Secretary, says that it's
appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of 'lifestyle choices.'" Steyn
adds, "Smokers and the obese may look at their gay neighbor having
unprotected sex with multiple partners, and wonder why his 'lifestyle
choices' get a pass while theirs don't. But that's the point: Tyranny is
always whimsical."
In most of the developed world, the government has gradually
taken over many of the responsibilities of adulthood from health care,
childcare, care of the elderly and other responsibilities formerly seen as
individual or family. Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman suggests that
American conservatives preaching "family values" is hypocrisy while
Europeans live it. On the continent, Krugman says, "Government regulations
actually allow people to make a desirable tradeoff — to modestly lower
income in return for more time with friends and family." Steyn insightfully
observes, "As befits a distinguished economist, Professor Krugman failed to
notice that for a continent of 'family friendly' policies, Europe is
remarkably short of families. While America's fertility rate is more or less
at replacement level — 2.1 — seventeen European nations are at what
demographers call 'lowest-low' fertility — 1.3 or less — a rate from which
no society in human history has ever recovered. Germans, Spaniards, Italians
and Greeks have upside-down family trees: four grandparents have two
children and one grandchild." Steyn asks, "How can an economist analyze
'family friendly' policies without noticing that the upshot of these
policies is that nobody has any families?" My answer to Steyn's questions
is: the kind of economist that looks at the seen and ignores the unseen.
Mark Steyn provides us with a historical tidbit. "Live Free or
Die," which graces New Hampshire's license plate, are the words of John
Stark, New Hampshire's Revolutionary War hero. He uttered those words
decades after the War when he was 81 years old, the complete sentence being:
"Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils." Steyn says these words
should not be interpreted "as a battle cry: We'll win this thing or die
trying, die an honorable death. But in fact it's something far less
dramatic: It's a bald statement of the reality of our lives in the
prosperous West. You can live as free men, but, if you choose not to, your
society will die."
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Walter Williams Archives
© 2006, Creators Syndicate.
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