Boiling frogs - Government turning up the heat? - Granite Grok

Boiling frogs – Government turning up the heat?

From one of my favorite pundits Mark Steyn:

Incidentally, the government "overhaul" of GM is a useful shorthand for where we’re heading:

The first quid pro quo for the government giving you money (or "investing", as President Obama and David Brooks say) is that it gets to regulate your behavior. Not just who sits on your board or (see Sarkozy last week) where your factory has to be. When the government "pays" for your health care, it reserves the right to deny (as in parts of Britain) heart disease treatment for smokers or hip replacement for the obese. Why be surprised? When the state’s "paying" for your health, your lifestyle directly impacts its "investment."

The next stage is that, having gotten you used to having your behavior regulated, the state advances to approving not just what you do but what you’re allowed to read, see, hear, think: See the "Canadian Content" regulations up north, and the enforcers of the "human rights" commissions. Or Britain’s recent criminalization of "homophobic jokes."

You’d be surprised how painlessly and smoothly once-free peoples slip from government "investing" to government control.

Remember, it is not always Right vs Left, Republican vs Democrat.  That is the expected and the far too easy argument to see. 

The real question to ask is along the Freedom vs Tyranny axis – ALWAYS ask yourself, does this new law or action from my government increasing Freedom or decreasing it?

And yes, as we have seen, it bribes you (with your own money!) to give up your own freedom.

Eternal vigilance…

And let’s put it into today’s perspective – Obama putting lids on compensation:

The conversation puts me in mind of the famous dictum by Milton Friedman: people who have problems with free-market capitalism generally don’t have a problem with capitalism. They have a problem with freedom itself.

Go read the whole thing.

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