October 08, 2007

Everybody's a critic, but, let's face it, some critics are more equal than others. There are, after all, the critics who review such mudane tedium as movies, art, and the theatre; and then there are those who offer their measured words on happenings and machinations among the Beltway sophisticates. The latest contribution in this latter high-end criticism comes from our beloved Paul Krugman, who seems actually to believe that Reagan's heirs find it "funny... if you're poor, if you don't have health insurance, if you're sick."

No, really: Krugman believes "that the lack of empathy shown by ... Mr. Bush is genuine, not feigned."

Now, whether El Presidente W qualifies as one of Reagan's heirs is an assertion the examination of which is best left to another day. What truly is amazing is that in the Land of Krugman, skepticism about expansion of a government program---in this case, SCHIP medical schocialism---translates to a "lack of empathy." And empathy for precisely whom? The taxpayers? The children shifted from private insurance into government programs inevitably more restricted? Future patients forced to endure the rationing and all of the other perversites that follow upon the bureaucratization of medical finance and health care delviery, just as night follows day? "Compassion"---empathy---is the last refuge of modern-day scoundrels, and it is a shameful argument.

Posted by Benjamin Zycher at October 8, 2007 07:01 PM

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