Obamacare

Look On the Bright Side…

|

Now we get to find out what's in it.

NEXT: Political Speech, Freed

Books Editor Jesse Walker is the author of Rebels on the Air and The United States of Paranoia.

Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time. Report abuses.

  1. BOHICA

    “Always look on the bright side of death.”

  2. JW

    Hmmm…just a shit sandwich. Not even any Cheeto’s? or a fruit cup.

    1. JW,
      The TARP bill was the shit sandwich. This is a turdrito.

    2. Episiarch

      But there’s a giant douche too! And I’m not just talking about you.

  3. Charles

    Well, at least we can find some humor. Now, let’s find some guns?

  4. Sanjuro Tsubaki

    We already know what’s in it. That’s why it shouldn’t have passed.

  5. Jeff

    Look on the bright side. We can at long last give up any delusions that this might ever again be a free country.

  6. jb

    March 20, 2010 10:45ET
    The exact moment American exceptionalism died.

    1. Cap'n NoStar

      Happy Dependence Day.

  7. David R. Block

    Why it’s just CRAPTASTIC.

  8. The day when our country wins or loses will be November 2.

    1. Jeff

      If it’s up to Republicans to save us, we have already lost.

      1. Steven

        “The best ordered state will be one in which the largest number of persons … most nearly resembles a single person. The first and highest form of the State … is a condition in which the private and the individual is altogether banished from life …” (Plato’s _Republic_ & _Laws_ c. 370 BCE)

        Recommended reading: The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America, Leonard Peikoff; 1982.

        Excerpt, Page 1, Chapter 1:

        “Here is the theory:

        “It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole … that above all the unity of a nation’s spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual….”

        “This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture…. The basic attitude from which such activity arises, we call-to distinguish it from egoism and selfishness-idealism. By this we understand only the individual’s capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men.”

        “These statements were made in our century by the leader of a major Western nation. His countrymen regarded his view point as uncontroversial. His political program implemented it faithfully.

        “The statements were made by Adolf Hitler. He was explaining the moral philosophy of Nazism.

        “And here is the ultimate practice (as described by William Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich):

        “The gas chambers themselves [at Auschwitz] and the adjoining crematoria, viewed from a short distance, were not sinister-looking places at all; it was impossible to make them out for what they were. Over them were well-kept lawns with flower borders; the signs at the entrances merely said BATHS. The unsuspecting Jews thought they were simply being taken to the baths for the delousing which was customary at all camps. And taken to the accompaniment of sweet music!

        “For there was light music. An orchestra of ‘young and pretty girls all dressed in white blouses and navy-blue skirts,’ as one survivor remembered, had been formed from among the inmates. While the selection was being made for the gas chambers this unique musical ensemble played gay tunes from The Merry Widow and Tales of Hoffmann. Nothing solemn and somber from Beethoven. The death marches at Auschwitz were sprightly and merry tunes, straight out of Viennese and Parisian operetta.

        “To such music, recalling as it did happier and more frivolous times, the men, women and children were led into the ‘bath houses,’ where they were told to undress preparatory to taking a ‘shower.’ Sometimes they were even given towels. “Once they were inside the ‘shower-room’ ? and perhaps this was the first moment that they may have suspected some thing was amiss, for as many as two thousand of them were packed into the chamber like sardines, making it difficult to take a bath ? the massive door was slid shut, locked and hermetically sealed. Up above where the well-groomed lawn and flower beds almost concealed the mushroom-shaped lids of vents that ran up from the hall of death, orderlies stood ready to drop into them the amethyst-blue crystals of hydrogen cyanide….

        “Surviving prisoners watching from blocks nearby remembered how for a time the signal for the orderlies to pour the crystals down the vents was given by a Sergeant Moll. ‘Na, gib ihnen schon zu fressen’ (‘All right, give ’em something to chew on’), he would laugh and the crystals would be poured through the openings, which were then sealed.

        “Through heavy-glass portholes the executioners could watch what happened. The naked prisoners below would be looking up at the showers from which no water spouted or perhaps at the floor wondering why there were no drains. It took some moments for the gas to have much effect. But soon the inmates became aware that it was issuing from the perforations in the vents. It was then that they usually panicked, crowding away from the pipes and finally stampeding toward the huge metal door where, as Reitlinger puts it, ‘they piled up in one blue clammy blood-spattered pyramid, clawing and mauling each other even in death.’ ”

        […]
        ===========================
        From Plato to Hume to Kant to Hegel to Comte to the current crop of little Platos populating American & European universities, this sort of “progressive thinking” has been the rule rather than the exception throughout mankind’s history.

        The exception, up to now, has been the United States of America.

        The cause of the success of totalitarianism? The ethics of self-immolation, of self-sacrifice.

        The implied ethics underlying the United States: rational egoism, the basis for the politics of individualism–the (selfish) right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

        If one wishes to defeat the current trend toward the ancient idea of totalitarianism, one would make those ethics *explicit*.

        As Ayn Rand did, which is how she was able to predict–in 1957 in her novel _Atlas Shrugged_–the current trends we are seeing.

        Let me repeat: This battle can only be won by rejecting the morality of suicide in favor of a morality of life.

        The rest, as they say, is poopie ca-ca (i.e., derivative).

        1. Marc

          Leonard Peikoff: Nature’s Godwin.

      2. Snuff

        If you’re a Republican-hating moron like Jeff here, you’re already a loser anyway.

        1. Jeff

          Oh, psh. I don’t hate them. I just know better than to put any faith in them at all.

          1. Caught between statists and moralists, what’s a poor minarchist to do?

            1. Jeff

              Drink.

              1. Jeff wins! Jeff wins!

  9. Anonymous

    Screwin’ America bareback without K-Y!

  10. Patrick5

    We are all Libertarians now!

  11. sunny black

    I’d like to send this Glenngarry Glen Ross clip out to all the Obama voters (played here by Kevin Spacey)…thanks for “making a difference” and “changing the world”.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HURJNd0J4U

  12. And the INVASION continues…

  13. marmo

    Also on the bright side, we’ll have 400,000 new jobs immediately, according to Blinky Pelosi.

    1. capitol l

      I just read a story coming out of the AP that the administration is already touting the first job created under Obamacare. Supposedly some former male pin-up model from Massachusetts snagged himself a job with the government making $174,000 with full benefits, as a direct result of the newly enacted health care bill.

  14. Sean

    You mean 500 million new jobs a month

  15. Draco

    Did anyone else catch the video of Ms. Pelosi holding her gavel with a look of fevered joy on her face in passing this monstrosity?

    I actually think Ms. Pelosi may be clinically insane. Could any reasonable and wise person fail to have a certain amount of doubt in passing something this big along strictly party lines when the country is against it? But no, her eyes are shining like a lunatic’s…

    1. Bingo

      I’m willing to bet a large percentage of Congress, both D & R, are sociopatchs.

    2. Jeffersonian

      I saw that. Bitch ain’t got both oars in the water.

    3. Transient

      I think that was just the Botox…

    4. Syd Henderson

      You’ve got an overactive imagination, but hey, any straw to grasp onto?

  16. P Brooks

    Free unlimited health care!

    For everybody!

    YAY!

    1. Jeff

      IT’S HISTORICALLY HISTORIC!

      YAY!

  17. Trackback: http://republicanheretic.wordp…..reactions/

  18. We are all Libertarians now! 🙂

  19. Sch?ugg boots g?nstig tzen Sie Ihre Meinung,ugg boots ich hoffe,Sie auch weiterhin hart arbeiten!

  20. yes, you said it right!!!

  21. yes, you said right!

  22. Thank you. i think i like it, so cool UGG outlet

  23. The basic attitude from which such activity arises, we call-to distinguish it from egoism and selfishness-idealism. By this we understand only the individual’s capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men.

Please to post comments

Comments are closed.