Can the Moral ‘Narrative’ of ObamaCare Be Defeated?

Paul Hsieh reminds us that it is crucial that Obamacare be opposed on moral grounds - and then proceeds to show how to do just that in this brilliant essay:

Can the Moral ‘Narrative’ of ObamaCare Be Defeated?

EXCERPTS: As Leonard Peikoff once wrote, “So long as people believe that socialized medicine is a noble plan, there is no way to fight it. You cannot stop a noble plan — not if it really is noble. The only way you can defeat it is to unmask it — to show that it is the very opposite of noble. Then at least you have a fighting chance.”

Hence, one must challenge ObamaCare not merely on the economic or procedural levels but on the moral level. . . .

The government should not rob men to pay their neighbors’ medical bills. Instead, it should protect each man’s right to his hard-earned wealth, including respecting his right to decide whether and how he should save it, spend it, or give to others as charity. That’s “the right thing to do.”

And as with domestic security, in the end there is no fundamental conflict between freedom and health care. The only way we preserve our ability to receive quality affordable medical care is by respecting core principles of freedom and individual rights.

If we violate those principles in a vain attempt to guarantee “universal health care,” we will violate the moral principle that each man is entitled to the fruits of his labor, instead enslaving each man to pay for his neighbor’s medical care. We will destroy the prosperity and innovation that make modern medicine possible. We will give the government control over how doctors may practice, and which treatments patients may or may not receive. Our lives will no longer be ours, but rather the government’s. The end result will be, in Leonard Peikoff’s words, “the very opposite of noble.”