Political commentary

Today I hand the microphone to Matisse.

I did get a nice email from Bill Whittle, the guy who wrote the National Review Online article I blogged about last week. Someone told him I'd written about his piece, and we had a pleasant exchange about it. It's safe to say he and I don't agree about the overall health care issue. He says that having free health care would makes us slaves.

This is your basic Hayekian “Road To Serfdom” argument: if you become economically dependent upon the state you become its slave. I would counter that argument by talking about democratic accountability, the inherently complex interdependence of people in society, positive vs negative liberty, the role of government in solving problems that private enterprise cannot address well. But Matisse ... I should say, Mistress Matisse ... has a different critique.

I think that Mr. Whittle has no idea how difficult it is to make even one person a really good slave, let alone a nation of them. Sure, we'd all be in chat rooms and on personals sites, saying we were slaves, but in reality we'd be whining, demanding, manipulative do-me queens, who expected our government overlords to fall out of bed every morning in full fetish attire and spank our butts before they even had a cup of coffee. Trust me on this, Mr. Whittle — in six months our liberal Masters and Mistresses would be running for the exits. It's not for wimps, this slave-making business.

I defer to the Mistress' expertise on this question.