The Smashed Pillars of Conservatism

Here's a pretty interesting editorial from (and I can't believe I'm even saying this) Whitley Strieber:

"What the far right seeks is control of our moral life. That is not conservatism. What the far left seeks is control of our economic life. And that is not liberalism. Ironically, the true liberal and the true conservative converge at the one point that really matters: freedom. The conservative says that freedom comes to a man who is allowed room to find it on his own. The liberal says that it comes to him only if it is given to him by protective regulation and supportive social legislation.

All of the ideologues on both says say the hell with freedom, either do it our way or go straight to hell.

I very well remember the day I sat down to read the long, complex document that has become known as Hillary's Health Care Plan. It would have extended universal health care in the United States. But there was a price to pay: the individual had to give up essentially all choices, even with regard to which doctor would give him his health care.

I thought at the time that it was the worst single piece of legislation I had ever read, a fantastic, almost surrealistic assault on essentially every detail of our health care system that works. I wasn't alone: the American people, be they Democrats, Republican or whatever else, stood with their collective jaw on the floor, staring at this lunatic suggestion that we trust the welfare of our bodies to a bureaucratic rat's nest even more labyrinthine and encompassing than Britain's notorious National Health system."

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