President Ebola

Regular readers will know that I regard the protection of individual rights as the only proper purpose of government. Accordingly, I oppose ObamaCare, an unwarranted government intrusion into medicine, on the grounds that it violates individual rights. If I am ill and cannot pay for treatment, I do not have the right to steal money for the purpose or to get treatment from a physician at gunpoint: ObamaCare, in which the government effectively does the same for me is worse in the sense that the government is supposed to prevent such things.

By the same reasoning, the government should stay out of medical affairs entirely unless the threat of one person causing harm to another deliberately or through carelessness arises. Even then, the role of government is limited to containing and ending the specific threat.

It is thus both interesting and -- as Thomas Sowell correctly indicates -- revealing that the same man who wants to tell physicians whom to heal and for how much -- and patients how they may manage their own health -- is worse than failing to do one of the few things he should be doing regarding the Ebola epidemic in Africa:

There was a time when an outbreak of a deadly disease overseas would bring virtually unanimous agreement that our top priority should be to keep it overseas. Yet Barack Obama has refused to bar entry to the United States by people from countries where the Ebola epidemic rages, as Britain has done.

The reason? Refusing to let people with Ebola enter the United States would conflict with the goal of fighting the disease. In other words, the safety of the American people takes second place to the goal of helping people overseas.

As if to emphasize his priorities, President Obama has ordered thousands of American troops to go into Ebola-stricken Liberia, disregarding the dangers to those troops and to other Americans when the troops return. [bold added]

Asking what this says about Barack Obama, Sowell verges on understatement: "At worst, he may consider Americans' interests expendable..."

Not that we really needed further proof, but has there ever been a clearer indication that this man is unfit for office? Indignant Americans like myself need a brief way to express our disgust and apathetic ones may need help to wake up to what they allowed or helped to occur. For these purposes I might suggest the title of this post, but with reservations: It seems that some have beaten me to the punch, and they are somewhat at cross-purposes with me.

-- CAV