My letters

To the editor:

I’m glad to read that Brian Jones is suspicious of big government (“The Left Strikes Back,” Letters, Park Slope Courier, August 9, 2004). I, on the other hand, have no suspicions left. Government is brute force. It forces taxpayers and consumers to subsidize rich corporate farmers not to grow food. It forces me to patronize big monopolies such as ConEd, by making it illegal for other delivery companies to compete. It forces on me its own big monopolies such as the post office, by making it illegal for others to compete, and the public-school system, by forcing all to pay whether they use it or not. It forces on me its own idea of morality, and its own ideas of what’s good for me. It conspires with big business and big law in exchange for campaign contributions, forcing me as a consumer to pay the bill. It forces me to pay for other people’s health care and other people’s housing and other people’s child care. Government is supposed to be my servant, not my master.

But I digress. Brian’s letter is so scattershot that I will address only a few points. Health care is one. Before government got involved in a massive way, doctors made house calls for $5 and, contrary to Brian’s suggestion, people were not dying in the street. Despite his suspicion of big government, his solution is more big government. The real solution to the health-care mess that government has created is to figure out how to free America’s health-care system from the clutches of an uncaring, unresponsive, and unaccountable bureaucracy.

Brian refers to people “less fortunate” than I. I don’t know how he knows who has had the better or worse luck in life, so I don’t know of whom he is speaking. In fact, I have had plenty of bad luck but I sought to overcome it through hard work, sacrifice, and thrift. If Brian has had any bad luck in life, I imagine he did the same. If by “less fortunate” he means people who don’t have as much money as he has, he should say so.

Brian doesn’t like MetLife, because it is so big. I suppose he prefers doing business with smaller insurance companies when he needs insurance. Obviously, many people prefer dealing with large insurance companies. That’s the beauty of the competitive free market. Live and let live.

Brian can read my proposal for improving education in my letter “Canned Corn & Kids” in the June 21 issue.

Have the ideas of the left been a failure the past 40 years? No, they have been a resounding success. They have created a culture of poverty and dependency more degrading and permanent than when they began. The tragedy of the ideas of the left lies not in how much they cost, but what they have bought.
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My letters

Thursday, August 12, 2004

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