From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
When health care becomes the responsibility of the government, Mark Steyn has been arguing for a couple of years now, health care spending very quickly squeezes out spending on the traditional functions of government, including, especially, defense.
Doing some research on the Cold War, I've found that Mark was more correct than I'd realized.
In late February 1947, Lord Inverchapel, the British ambassador to Washington, informed the State Department that the socialist government of Clement Attlee had chosen to end assistance to Greece and Turkey in just six weeks, withdrawing from both countries on March 31. Since the Soviets had already placed both Turkey and Greece under intense pressure, and since permitting them to fall to the Soviets would have given Stalin total control of the Black Sea and the Aegean, enabling him to realize the ancient Russian strategic aim of acquiring warm water ports, the Truman administration scrambled, deciding the United States had no choice but to step up, taking the place of rapidly retrenching Britain. On March 12, Truman went before a joint session of Congress to announce what we now know as the Truman Doctrine: Henceforth, the president said, it would be "the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."
That much I had already known. What I hadn't realized was why the Attlee government chose to retrench when it did. The proximate cause was one of the worst winters of the century: snow drifts shut down railroads and highways, making it impossible to get coal to power stations. Factories closed across Britain, throwing some four million out of work--which in turn placed a new strain in the budget. In the background, though, hovered the new National Health Service. The legislation was enacted in 1946, the year before, and Attlee's government was acutely aware of the costs of implementing the legislation in time to permit the NHS to begin functioning in the following year, 1948.
In other words, the NHS forced Britain to cut defense spending, bring home troops, and reduce its once-proud role in the world even before it went into effect.
ObamaCare delenda est.
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Jun '10
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
And couldn't Britain use some press gangs about now?
Apr '11
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
Amen Sir. Especially the Latin phrase at the end. Socialized Medicine proves to be the real threat to national security because it saps (over the long term) our ability to fund our defense. Love it (the analysis not the phenomenon). We can beat the Carthaginians of our day so long as we're able to fund the effort to beat them.
Edited on Aug 10, 2011 at 7:10amApr '11
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
Peter, we will see soon enough when the "super committee" (I wish they would use a different term, congress is already full of themselves enough to begin with) meets and we see where the administration, through their minions, pushes for "fair and balanced" cuts.
We need another "Silent Cal" to please step forward and speak for common sense and the true values he spoke of such as compassion that protects ones dignity while building their character.
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
Fast forward to recent events: Is it not notable that today's Britain not only has cut back its military forces but apparently can no longer fulfill the first function of a government: to protect its people from attack, in this case from the hoodlums running riot in London's suburbs.
Sep '10
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
Has no one heard of closing the barn door after the horse is out? Obama-care is certainly the latest step on the path toward socialized medicine that has been taken in this country. If I recall Medicare was passed with significant GOP support and President Bush, certainly took another step along the path with Part D. It might be noted Part D was passed by a GOP controlled house with legislative maneuvers as bad as, if not worse than, what was used by the Democrats to get Obama care passed. Many of the loudest critics of O-care were instrumental in its passage.
Now we are being asked by GOP speech writers and longtime supporters to trust the GOP to turn things around. When calls of, “we want action not talk” and “real victories, not moral victories”are voiced, we are told we much learn to be patient.
This sounds to me to be a lot of what the horse left on the bran floor before it fled.
Aug '11
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
Good stuff. The best part of the story is that central planning couldn't control the weather. Perhaps if England had asked Kim Il Sung for help, since the man claimed to control the weather.
Also, being patient is a good idea, if the only other option is to lose. Just like hope and change weren't a strategy, neither is outrage. Prudence is a virtue of statesmanship; it shows maturity and self-control. The opposite is what we see in the streets of London. So, yes, be patient or self-destruct.
Oct '10
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
So a large/welfare state:
1. Undermines virtue;
2. Destroys communities;
3. Creates dependency;
4. Corrupts politics;
5. Compromises defence.
Sounds like patient incrementalism is called for to me. Not.
On a lighter note: Photoshoplooter!
Edited on Aug 10, 2011 at 8:56amJun '11
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
Peter Robinson: When health care becomes the responsibility of the government, Mark Steyn has been arguing for a couple of years now, health care spending very quickly squeezes out spending on the traditional functions of government, including, especially, defense.
This is a great post.
You could easily flip this thought around and ask, In what other areas of life and business has the government taken on a gorilla like presence? And how does their presence affect and alter the course of those areas?"
Like the debt market.
How much capital is parked in Treasuries that might otherwise be put to work in corporate bond markets? Or private financing? What crowding out effect does the government's incessant and wave-like need to borrow have on the flow of investment funds?
How many money managers would be forced to exercise greater powers of analysis with respect to financial statements if they did not have the easy option of simply putting money into politically guaranteed paper?
We may very well see a day when the markets no longer accept Treasury paper on a wholesale basis. That day may be the beginning of America's next great economic wave.
Sep '10
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
Do you remember the riots in Vancouver?
Sep '10
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
After WW II, Britain was exhausted, but like the US it was in a position to take advantage of victory. Why did the two nations take such different paths? Surely the ascendance of the Labour Party must be one of the chief reasons why Britain never really recovered from the war.
May God destroy their bodies and souls in Hell.
Mar '11
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
Well, yes - and we can see the results in the streets of England.
It's deja vu all over again for those of us brought up in the UK - I was born there in 1949, just about the time the NHS started (though I was born in a private nursing home). The subsequent rush outa India, the middle east, etc., is the cause of most of today's problems, which were handed off to the US - I guess this is the subject of Mr Steyn's book.
Obamacare falls far short of the NHS, but we can already see the push to cut defense spending, and of course the strategy is to move incrementally towards Medicare for life and no military - pretty much where the UK is now, with barely enough troops to send out on the streets to restore law and order.
2012 will be the year when we will either follow the UK path and Mr Steyn's predictions, or wind back the hope and change and rediscover the founding principles of the USA. I have no idea which way it will go, but it would help if we had a Ryan/Rubio ticket.
Edited on Aug 10, 2011 at 9:18amSep '10
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
Ryan-Rubio '12: Your anti riot candidates for the next 4 years.
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
Can I have this on a bumper sticker?
Jul '10
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
George Savage
Can I have this on a bumper sticker? · Aug 10 at 9:24am
If you don't mind the joys that come with making the Secret Service's list.
Aug '10
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
<i>ObamaCare delenda est.</i>
Now that you have opened the can of worms, I expect all of your posts to end with this cry to action!
Jul '10
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
dogsbody: After WW II, Britain was exhausted, but like the US it was in a position to take advantage of victory. Why did the two nations take such different paths? Surely the ascendance of the Labour Party must be one of the chief reasons why Britain never really recovered from the war.
...
The Great Depression did not relent in the UK until 1955. Brits that I meet socially today still complain about the US insisting on payments against the war debt after WW II. The Empire was unwound at FDR's, and then Truman's, insistence. The US was reflexively anti-imperialist, and the US made the unwinding (after victory) a condition of our European involvement during the war. (After intervening in two world wars, the US was in no mood to spend blood and treasure to ease the affordability of European wars or to prop up European empires.)
Did the NHS help extend the Depression in the UK? Definitely.
Edited on Aug 10, 2011 at 11:29amApr '11
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
On a tangent: when the Brits landed Royal Marines in Greece at the end of the war to help restore peace and goodwill with high explosives, the patriarch of Athens was brought out to the British cruiser (one of the Leanders, I believe) for talks. As the archbishop was in full robes and it was Christmastime, some of the RN folks mistook him for a Father Christmas-figure sent to entertain the sailors.
May '10
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
Victor Daves Hanson has observed that the communist Chinese may not always be willing to loan the U.S. the money to fund a national health care system that they do not provide for their own people and they may be even less willing to accept repayment in inflated dollars. "Greenspans", one might say.
In other news: just this week the Chinese have launched their first aircraft carrier for sea trials. Just saying.
Edited on Aug 10, 2011 at 10:49amMay '10
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
Kervinlee: Victor Davis Hanson has observed that the communist Chinese may not always be willing to loan the U.S. the money to fund a national health care system that they do not provide for their own people and they may be even less willing to accept repayment in inflated dollars. "Greenspans", one might say.
In other news: just this week the Chinese have launched their first aircraft carrier for sea trials. Just saying. · Aug 10 at 10:46am
Edited on Aug 10 at 10:49 am
Mar '11
Re: From Attlee to Obama, Or Mark Steyn Was Even More Right About This Than I'd Realized
Kervinlee:
In other news: just this week the Chinese have launched their first aircraft carrier for sea trials. Just saying. · Aug 10 at 10:46am
Edited on Aug 10 at 10:49 am
The Chinese government has truly become communist in name only. It's basically the old Mandarins with picture of Chairman Mao in front. The Military leaders are committed Maoist Communists, but it's very telling that the Chinese government limits their funding, along with the rest of their government. China is tyrannical, but it's not the omnipresent government that the likes of Thomas Friedman would have you believe. The Chinese.... short of a military coups... are never going to spend as much on their military as we do. Not even close actually. China spends about a third of what we do... GDP-wise... on their military. This is one reason why I think we have plenty of room to cut in DOD too, but not even the most important reason.