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Robert Reich: Positively Fascist By Rizzuto Thu Oct 15, 2009 - From time to time a video, having once been lost in the shuffle of the millions of hours of content on the internet, reemerges at a time in which it becomes more relevant. Luckily for us, this phenomenon occurred recently with the re-discovery of a 2007 speech given by former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton and advisor to Barack Obama, Robert Reich. In an address to students at the University of California Berkeley, Reich reveals just how draconian the lefts ideal solutions to containing healthcare costs are. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic I believe that these solutions can only be described one way; positively fascist. In his address (embedded below), Reich delivers a hypothetical speech given by a presidential candidate who exists in a nation “where citizens were honored in terms of their practice of citizenship and they were educated in terms of what the issues were.” Reich is not subtle in his insistence that his words represent what “the truth is.” Reich states that his intent is to reorganize the healthcare system so it will be more “amenable to treating sick people.” To this end, Reich says that: If you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months, it’s too expensive so we’re going to let you die.What might be scarier than his words is that he said this to the delight of the college age crowd who greeted his declaration with claps and cheers. The statement might have been heard by this crowd, but it’s questionable whether or not it was truly understood. Allow me to clarify. In free market terms, Reich is proposing that once the value of an individual’s labor drops below a level that the state deems appropriate--in this case that level will be objectively determined by an individual’s age--they will be denied life saving treatments. He insists that this is necessary due to the fact that the return the system might receive from the individual does not warrant the spending. In other words, the existence of the elderly, considered no longer essential to the function of the state, is deemed superfluous and therefore expendable. Are you awake yet? But Reich goes further in his admission when he says: Also I’m going to use the bargaining leverage of the federal government…to force drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers to reduce their costs but that means less innovation which means you are probably not going to live much longer than your parents.Without any sense of shame, Reich is admitting that medical progress is actually in conflict with the state planning. This is an amazing admission considering that the very thing which drives down prices, namely efficiency created by innovation, is seen as at odds with the left’s preferred central planning scheme. This is tantamount to an admission that it is their intention to establish and maintain a system that keeps prices high. While they will extract the necessary amount taxes from the population to pay for this system, it is unlikely --logically speaking--that this burden would ever be relieved in any way other than cost cutting measures like rationing. Make no doubt about it; although its proponents might not recognize it in the terms that I have laid out here, this is the system that the left intends to set up. We’ve literally come to a point where the lefts “solutions” have become so utterly draconian and convoluted that they bear a similarity to the aims of antagonists in numerous science fiction movies (Logan’s Run anyone?). The reaction of the college age audience also brings to mind a sci-fi movie where it is declared that “This is how Democracy dies, to thunderous applause” h/t Verum Serum
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