Principles in Practice: The Blog of the Objective Standard

Principles in Practice: June 2007

Friday, June 29, 2007

Bush's Stem Cell Veto by Keith Lockitch

Posted by ARI Media at 6:45 PM

Contrary to the claims of President George W. Bush ("Bush will try to soften stem cell veto," June 21), there is nothing unethical about destroying embryos in the course of scientific research. An embryo is a potential, not an actual, human being, just as canvas is a potential, not an actual, work of art. It is a primitive cluster of cells, which is no more unethical to destroy than the cells that make up one's appendix.

Calling an embryo "human life" is an evasion of the distinction between a mass of undifferentiated cells in a test tube and an actual, living human being. Embryonic stem cell research could potentially improve the lives of millions. In an effort to obscure the anti-life consequences of his opposition to such research, the president cited new discoveries that suggest scientists might one day be able to create pluripotent cells from non-embryonic cells, supposedly making the "unethical" destruction of embryonic cells unnecessary.

But human welfare demands that scientists pursue every avenue that promises to realize the potential of stem cell technology—not abandon embryonic stem cell research in order to assuage faith- based objections.

We should praise this research for the life-enhancing breakthroughs it promises—and condemn the immoral attempt to return us to the Dark Ages, before science was liberated from the chains of religious dogmatism.

Keith Lockitch is a PhD in physics and a resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

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Monday, June 25, 2007

Put the 'Independence' Back in Independence Day by Michael S. Berliner

Posted by ARI Media at 5:54 PM

America's cities and towns will soon fill with parades, fireworks and barbecues, in celebration of the Fourth of July, the 231st birthday of America. But one hopes that the speeches will contain fewer bromides and more attention to exactly what is being celebrated. The Fourth of July is Independence Day, but America's leaders and intellectuals have been trying to move us further and further away from the meaning of Independence Day, away from the philosophy that created this country.

What we hear from politicians, intellectuals, and the media is that independence is passé, that we've reached a new age of "interdependence." We hear demands for mandatory "volunteering" to serve others, for sacrifice to the nation. We hear demands from trust-busters that successful companies be punished for being "greedy" and not serving society. But this is not the message of America. It is the direct opposite of why America became a beacon of hope for the truly oppressed throughout the world. They have come here to escape poverty and dictatorship; they have come here to live their own lives, where they aren't owned by the state, the community, or the tribe.

"Independence Day" is a critically important title. It signifies the fundamental meaning of this nation, not just of the holiday. The American Revolution remains unique in human history: a revolution—and a nation—founded on a moral principle, the principle of individual rights. Jefferson at Philadelphia, and Washington at Valley Forge, pledged their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor." For what? Not for mere separation from England, not—like most rebels—for the "freedom" to set up their own tyranny. In fact, Britain's tyranny over the colonists was mild compared to what most current governments do to their citizens.

Jefferson and Washington fought a war for the principle of independence, meaning the moral right of an individual to live his own life as he sees fit. Independence was proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence as the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What are these rights? The right to life means that every individual has a right to his own independent life, that one's life belongs to oneself, not to others to use as they see fit.

The right to liberty means the right to freedom of action, to act on one's own judgment, the right not to have a gun pointed at one's head and be forced to do what someone else commands. And the right to the pursuit of happiness means that an individual may properly pursue his own happiness, e.g., his own career, friends, hobbies, and not exist as a mere tool to serve the goals of others. The Founding Fathers did not proclaim a right to the attainment of happiness, knowing full well that such a policy would carry with it the obligation of others to make one happy and result in the enslavement of all to all. The Declaration of Independence was a declaration against servitude, not just servitude to the Crown but servitude to anyone. (That some signers still owned slaves does not negate the fact that they established the philosophy that doomed slavery.)

Political independence is not a primary. It rests on a more fundamental type of independence: the independence of the human mind. It is the ability of a human being to think for himself and guide his own life that makes political independence possible and necessary. The government as envisaged by the Founding Fathers existed to protect the freedom to think and to act on one's thinking. If human beings were unable to reason, to think for themselves, there would be no autonomy or independence for a government to protect. It is this independence that defines the American Revolution and the American spirit.

To the Founding Fathers, there was no authority higher than the individual mind, not King George, not God, not society. Reason, wrote Ethan Allen, is "the only oracle of man," and Thomas Jefferson advised us to "fix reason firmly in her seat and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God." That is the meaning of independence: trust in your own judgment, in reason; do not sacrifice your mind to the state, the church, the race, the nation, or your neighbors.

Independence is the foundation of America. Independence is what should be celebrated on Independence Day. That is the legacy our Founding Fathers left us. It is a legacy we should keep, not because it is a legacy, but because it is right and just. It has made America the freest and most prosperous country in history.

Michael S. Berliner is co-chairman of the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Saturday, June 23, 2007

The Rushdie Fatwa and 'Religion vs. Free Speech'

Posted by Craig Biddle at 12:30 AM

"Cut off the head of Salman Rushdie!" chanted a crowd of Islamists in Pakistan yesterday as calls to murder the “blasphemer” were renewed following his knighthood in Britain.

Such barbarism is to be expected from religionists—not just from Muslims, but from any religionists who are neither restrained by a rights-respecting constitution (as they are to some extent in America) nor terrified by a demonstration of the superiority of rational man over their fictional God.

Both the Old and the New Testaments call explicitly for the slaughter of those who blaspheme, but in America Jews and Christians are constitutionally forbidden to obey their holy books in full, so they refrain, and we can (for now) say what we want about their God who is not. (Thank the Founders for what’s left of the Constitution.)

Last year, in the wake of the Cartoon Jihad, I wrote an article for TOS titled “Religion vs. Free Speech,” and given the relevance of the essay to the unfortunately refreshed fatwa on Rushdie, I’ve decided to make it accessible to all. Here’s the link.

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Tuesday, June 19, 2007

How to Stop Iran? by Elan Journo

Posted by ARI Media at 7:39 PM

Bush's disastrous foreign policy—especially the Iraq fiasco—has led many to conclude that diplomatic "engagement" is our best hope for stopping Iran's nuclear program. But while Bush's policy is a failure, engagement is not the solution.

Bush's "moralistic" approach, we're told, entails denouncing nations as evil, refusing negotiations, and isolating and punishing hostile regimes. That, many believe, is how we landed in the catastrophe of Iraq.

And now Bush's moral denunciations of Teheran have supposedly escalated the nuclear standoff, while his policy of pressuring and isolating Iran by limiting its use of foreign banks has made Iran more defiant. That is why, diplomatists claim, Iran responded to the latest American-backed U.N. sanctions by ramping up production of nuclear material. Military conflict, they warn, and an Iraq-like debacle, loom.

But engagement can supposedly end the Iranian threat bloodlessly, because it discards inflexible moral dogmas. Just as Iran has shown it will meet "confrontation with confrontation," proponents write in the New York Times, so Iran will "respond to what it perceives as flexibility with pragmatism." Iran's recent release of 15 British hostages, we are told, was achieved precisely because Britain engaged in nonjudgmental, patient diplomacy. Putting aside our moral qualms about talking with monsters, would free us to negotiate a deal whereby Iran stops its nuclear program in exchange for Western carrots.

This scheme presumes that Iran, like us, seeks peace and prosperity and that no one—not even the mullahs—would put their moral ideals before a steady flow of loot. But in the three decades since its Islamic revolution, Iran has dedicated itself to spreading its moral ideal—Islamic totalitarianism—by force of arms. Teheran spends millions every year, not to pursue prosperity for its tyrannized citizens, but to finance terrorism and to build a nuclear arsenal to wield against enemies of Allah. It is Iran's commitment to the goal of subjugating infidels, not a quest for peace, that motivated its backing of the Hezbollah-Hamas war against Israel and its support for insurgents who slaughter American troops in Iraq.

Would diplomatic "incentives" encourage Iran to mitigate its ideology? No, they would only intensify its hostility. Negotiations buy Iran time; a settlement would provide loot to fund its nuclear program. Above all, diplomacy grants Iran moral legitimacy as a civilized regime: its hostile goals—"death to America"—and its murder of our citizens are made to seem reasonable differences of opinion. Such appeasement confirms the perverse notion that Allah's warriors, materially weaker but morally self-righteous, can succeed in bringing down the mighty infidel West. The real lesson of the recent hostage incident is how readily Western nations will grovel to appease Iran's blatant aggression.

The amoral policy of engagement fails for the same reason that Bush's policy fails: both reject the need of morality in foreign policy. Iran is intransigent—but precisely because Bush's policy merely pays lip service to rational moral principles.

What has been the administration's response to Iran's nuclear quest, to its funding of terrorists and Iraqi insurgents, to its hostilities stretching back to the 1979 invasion of our embassy? Did it morally judge Iran as an enemy regime waging war on America and fight to defend U.S. lives by militarily crushing Iran?

No. After 9/11, Washington cordially invited Iran into an anti-terrorism coalition; later, Bush denounced Iran as part of an "axis of evil"; now, he embraces diplomatic talks. To the extent that his administration does momentarily recognize Iran's evil, its response has been ludicrous: to thwart Iran's nuclear program, U.S. diplomats scrounged for votes at the U.N. to pass toothless sanctions, and tried to put financial "pressure" on Iran (e.g., by preventing it from trading oil in dollars), an absurdly futile scheme (Iran now trades in euros).

Moreover, when Bush has gone to war, it was not to crush an evil enemy, but to bring it "democracy." Bush's messianic crusade in the Middle East is a selfless war of sacrifice to needy Afghanis and Iraqis—not a war to uphold the moral goal of safeguarding the lives of Americans.

Bush's self-effacing, immoral foreign policy—like the appeasing gambit of engagement—licenses Iran to pursue its hostile goals with impunity.

The rational alternative to both of these self-destructive approaches is a policy committed to American self-defense, on principle. It is a policy that morally judges Iran—and that ruthlessly renders Iran non-threatening by military force. That does not mean a selfless, Iraq-like crusade to bring Iranians the vote. It means upholding the moral right of Americans to live in freedom by destroying Teheran’s Islamic totalitarian regime. Nothing less will do.

Elan Journo is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Ayn Rand Institute Offers Educational Program for the Study of Rand's Philosophy

Posted by ARI Media at 7:35 PM

Irvine, California (June 14, 2007)—Fifty years after the publication of her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, interest in Ayn Rand has never been greater. For those who want to study her ideas in depth, the Ayn Rand Institute's educational program, the Objectivist Academic Center, offers systematic instruction in Rand's philosophy, Objectivism.

More than one hundred students currently participate in the OAC's graduate and undergraduate programs, which for years have been offered as a supplement to a standard college education. The undergraduate program helps students develop a basic understanding of philosophy, of Objectivism as a philosophical system, and of the art of clear, objective thinking and writing. The focus of the graduate program is on mastering Objectivism, with special attention paid to proper philosophical methodology.

Students from all over the world attend classes online and via teleconference. Local students also have the option of attending classes at ARI's headquarters in Irvine, California. Select courses are open to auditors.

As a benefit to students who would like to receive college credit for their OAC coursework, ARI has partnered with Chapman University to offer two OAC courses, "Introduction to Philosophy" and "Introduction to Writing," through Chapman's distance learning program. Students are able to take the classes for credit, transfer the credits to their own university, and apply them toward their college degree.

Most full-time students receive tuition waivers, as well as other generous scholarships to help defray the costs of participating in the OAC. Additionally, ARI offers a wide array of support for OAC students, including grants, scholarships, and mentoring.

The application deadline for the 2007-08 academic year is July 30.

For more information on this program, please visit the Objectivist Academic Center website at http://www.aynrand.org/site/R?i=KIjNTULFfDcOZ9FS_4B7Hw.. or contact:

Debi Ghate
Vice President, Academic Programs
Ayn Rand Institute
(949) 222-6550, ext 206
dghate@aynrand.org

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The False Promise of Classical Education

Posted by Craig Biddle at 11:24 PM

The print edition of the Summer issue of TOS is at press and will be mailed shortly; the online version will be accessible to subscribers on June 20. For promotional purposes, we are making Lisa VanDamme’s “The False Promise of Classical Education” available early and to all. Here are the first few paragraphs of Ms. VanDamme’s essay:

In E. D. Hirsch’s best-selling book Cultural Literacy, he cites a Washington Post article titled “The Cheerful Ignorance of the Young in L.A.” in which the author says:

I have not yet found one single student in Los Angeles, in either college or high school, who could tell me the years when WWII was fought. . . . Nor have I found one who knew when the American Civil War was fought. . . .

Only two could even approximately identify Thomas Jefferson. Only one could place the date of the Declaration of Independence. None could name even one of the first ten amendments to the Constitution or connect them with the Bill of Rights. . . .1

A typical study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) concludes that the average eleventh-grade student is an incompetent writer. To evaluate their writing ability, testers asked high school juniors to write a paragraph based on notes they were given about a haunted house. The performance of half the students was judged to be either “unsatisfactory” or “minimal.” The following is a “minimal” response: “The house with no windows. This is a house with dead-end hallways, 36 rooms and stairs leading to the cieling [sic]. Doorways go nowhere and all this to confuse ghosts.”2 That is the student’s complete, word-for-word response—and represents the performance of nearly half of all eleventh graders. Most of the other half were evaluated as writing “adequate” paragraphs. Just 2 percent wrote something that was judged to be “elaborate,” a step up from “adequate.”

In Dumbing Down Our Kids, Charles Sykes tells a chilling story about a straight-A student in the eighth grade named Andrea, who was very eager to learn science. Unfortunately for Andrea, her school, like most today, stressed the importance of “creativity” over “dreary” facts, and of “hands-on,” “active” learning over “dull,” didactic instruction. This bright young girl with a thirst for scientific knowledge spent her time in science class picking up cereal with a tongue depressor (to simulate the way birds feed), hunting for paper moths on a wall, and drawing pictures of scientists. When Andrea wrote a letter complaining that she had gotten nothing out of the class, she was expelled for being rude and disrespectful.3

You have probably read stories like these and been horrified both by how shamefully ignorant, inarticulate, and illiterate many American students are, and, even worse, by what schools do to students like Andrea. I wish I could dismiss such stories as rare incidents circulated among cynical critics of American schools to give poignancy to their arguments. Unfortunately, my experience interviewing and teaching students at my school has shown me otherwise.

Some time ago, a woman brought her teenage daughter to visit VanDamme Academy. In an effort to get to know more about this girl and her educational history, I asked her a few questions about her current school. At one point, I asked what she was studying in history class. She looked at me with an expression of utter bafflement and said nothing. I realized my mistake and promptly changed the question to, “What are you studying in social studies?” Her puzzlement briefly dissipated—she now understood the question—but it returned as soon as she attempted an answer. After a little thought, she looked at me, shrugged her shoulders dismissively, and said, “I don’t know.” I realized that my second question was as unanswerable as my first. To state what she was studying would presuppose some connection, some integrating theme among the stories, newspaper articles, and papier-mâché projects that made up her social studies class.

One of my best, most dedicated, and intelligent students in recent years transferred to VanDamme Academy from an Orange County public school in seventh grade. In his first year at my school he studied ancient history—a subject that, I later discovered, he had also studied in sixth grade at his previous school. His mother told me that she once asked him, “Daniel, aren’t you bored repeating the same material?” Apparently he simply chuckled and said, “Mom. Everything meaningful we learned last year in my social studies class?—here we covered that the first day.”

Literature classes—or rather, the literature portion of “English” classes, which cram in literature, writing, spelling, vocabulary, and sometimes grammar—are no better. I am the junior high literature teacher at VanDamme Academy, and I often begin the year with a discussion of the value of studying literature. I intend to remind my students what they stand to gain from reading, by drawing upon novels and plays they had read in my class in seventh grade, such as Hugo’s Ninety-Three, Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, Rattigan’s The Browning Version, and Corneille’s Cinna. I want to remind them that a character can stand in your mind as a powerful embodiment of certain traits, that the plot of a great novel can be gripping and emotionally stirring, and that a classic work of literature can capture a highly complex and abstract theme in a compelling, concrete form. One year, my class included a new student who had just completed seventh grade at St. Margaret’s, arguably the most prestigious private school in Orange County. So that I could include this new student in the discussion, I asked her mother what she had read the previous year. Her mother informed me that her daughter’s class had done a six-month study of A Walk to Remember, which is described by Amazon.com as a “boy-makes-good tearjerker” and which was recently made into a movie starring teen pop star Mandy Moore.

One of my most memorable experiences with a new transfer student came several years ago, when I taught my class the poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats, the poem with the immortal line “Beauty is truth, truth beauty—That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” In an effort to understand the poem’s theme, we defined unfamiliar words and discussed the poem line by line and stanza by stanza, rewriting each section in plain prose. I explained to the students that I believed the theme of the poem to concern the timelessness of art and its consequent power to inspire future generations. I showed them how I inferred this theme from each line of the poem, stressing the connection between them. I later asked my students to write an essay explaining the theme of the poem. One student, who had recently come from another school, wrote an essay that began with a line I will never forget: “The theme of this poem is that all art is sacred, whether it is a realistic painting or a smudge on a canvas.” This moment, to me, summed up an important characteristic of American education: Cultural bromides had come to replace thought. The student was not troubled by the fact that this bromide bore no relation to the poem, because, like a smudge on a canvas, she regarded her opinion as sacred. I looked at her essay, handed it back to her, and said, “Could you please go find some evidence from the poem to support this theme?” Needless to say, she could not.

What has brought education to this state of disintegration, superficiality, and mindlessness? Bad philosophy. The educational philosophy that has most influenced modern education is the school known as “progressive education.” The leading theorist of “progressive” education was 20th-century philosopher John Dewey, but the intellectual foundations of the movement lie in the writings of 18th-century philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant.

Read the whole thing here.

If you’ve not yet subscribed to TOS, now is the time to act. While supplies last, you can still begin your subscription with the inaugural issue; just let us know your preference. Subscribe today!

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

No Right to 'Free' Health Care by Onkar Ghate

Posted by ARI Media at 5:40 PM

The cause of the U.S. health-care mess is governmental interference. The solution, therefore, is not more governmental control, whether via nationalized medical insurance or a government takeover of medicine.

Health insurance costs so much today because the government, on the premise that there exists a "right" to health care at someone else's expense, has promised Americans a free lunch. When a person can consume medical services without needing to consider how to pay for them—Medicare, Medicaid, or the individual's employer will foot the bill—demand skyrockets. The $2,000 elective liver test he or she would have forgone in favor of a better place to live suddenly becomes a necessity when its cost seems to add up to $0.

As the expense of providing "free" health care erupts accordingly, the government tries to control costs by clamping down on the providers of health care. A massive net of regulations descends on doctors, nurses, insurers, and drug companies. As more of their endeavors are rendered unprofitable, drug companies produce fewer drugs, and insurers limit their policies or exit the industry.

Doctors and nurses, now buried in paperwork and faced with the endless, unjust task of appeasing government regulators, find their love for their work dissipating. They cut their hours or leave the profession. Many young people decide never to enter those fields in the first place.

What happens when demand skyrockets and supply is restricted? The price of medicine explodes. What was once to serve as a free lunch for everyone becomes lunch for no one.

The solution? Remove all controls. Recognize each citizen's right and responsibility to pay for his or her own health care, and return to insurers the entrepreneurial freedom to come up with innovative products.

True freedom would bring health care into the reach of the average U.S. citizen again—just as it has done for other goods and services, such as computers, cell phones, and food.

Dr. Onkar Ghate is a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute.

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Wednesday, June 06, 2007

The G-8 vs. the Immoral Bandwagon for African Aid

Posted by ARI Media at 5:22 PM

Irvine, CA—Two years ago the G-8 pledged $50 billion more in aid for Africa, but that promise, aid advocates charge, has been broken. They claim that several countries failed to ramp up aid, that last year donations from some countries actually declined—and that the world's richest countries must give far more.

Nations accused of giving too little say that they wrote-off millions in African debts, which they say should be counted as aid. And, perhaps to preempt criticism, President Bush last week announced plans to spend $30 billion to fight AIDS in Africa—doubling America's current commitment.

"But instead of disputing how aid is measured or guiltily promising billions more, the G-8 should repudiate the alleged moral duty to selflessly serve the world's poor," said Elan Journo, junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute.

"We have no moral duty to sacrifice for the poor. Those who earn their prosperity by production and trade have a moral right to every penny of their riches. The notion that the richest nations must serve the 'needy' is based on the vicious moral code of altruism.

"Altruism holds that one's highest moral duty is to selflessly serve others—and thus that the world's 'haves' must sacrifice for the sake of its 'have-nots.' The productive, on this abhorrent view, have no moral right to pursue their own interests and keep their wealth; their only justification for existing is to serve the needy. Thus the world's richest nations must atone for their prosperity by sacrificing for the sake of those who lack, or don't care to earn, values.

"Africa is poor because it is rife with bloody tribalism and superstition—ideas that in the Dark Ages kept the Western world as poor, if not poorer, than today's Africa. If aid advocates were genuinely concerned with helping Africans, they would campaign for political and economic freedom, for individualism, reason and capitalism, for the ideas necessary to achieve prosperity.

"Instead, advocates barrage wealthy nations with reproaches and accusations of stinginess. Such abuse is necessary to induce the unearned guilt which impels Western leaders to do penance by sacrificing billions more in aid. While posturing as humanitarians, aid advocates are unmoved by the financial burdens imposed on productive individuals in donor countries who are bled dry to pay for foreign aid.

"It is past time that we repudiated the perverse bandwagon for aid to Africa. We should reject the corrupt moral principle that demands self-sacrifice—and proudly assert our unconditional right to our lives and to our wealth."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Monday, June 04, 2007

Compulsory National Service Is Anti-American

Posted by ARI Media at 3:14 PM

Irvine, CA—There has been a resurgence in calls for compulsory universal national service, most recently by former defense secretary Melvin R. Laird, who declared, "Young Americans . . . need to serve their country."

But according to Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, "Compulsory national service is anti-American.

"According to the advocates of compulsory service, young people take America's freedom for granted, being more concerned with selfishly pursuing an education and a fulfilling career than serving their country. To remedy that, they propose forcing young people to spend a few years working in the Peace Corps, nursing homes, or soup kitchens. This, supposedly, will make them appreciate freedom. But if the government can order a young person to stop pursuing the career he passionately loves in order to plant trees or clean bed pans, there is no freedom left for him to appreciate.

"America's distinctive virtue is that it was the first nation to declare that each individual is an end in himself, that he possesses an inalienable right to pursue his own happiness, and that the government's only function is to safeguard his freedom. Compulsory national service turns young people into temporary slaves in order to inculcate in their minds the opposite premise: that they have a duty to selflessly serve society. To justify such a policy on the grounds of promoting appreciation for freedom is perverse. To call it patriotic is obscene.

"Compulsory national service is a threat to freedom. It should be condemned for the anti-American policy that it is."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Doctor Defends Freedom in Medicine

Posted by Craig Biddle at 12:17 PM

Dr. Paul Hsieh has written an excellent op-ed opposing efforts to socialize medicine in Colorado. It begins:

The Colorado Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Reform recently selected four health care reform proposals for eventual consideration by the Colorado legislature. Although they differ in their details, these differences are dwarfed by their fundamental similarity - they all entail a massive increase in government interference in medicine in the name of "universal coverage."

All four plans inject government force into the doctor-patient relationship. They include some combination of forcing all residents into a single health program, forcing some or all individuals and/or businesses to purchase a state-approved insurance policy, requiring insurance companies to provide new additional benefits, establishing a new bureaucracy to set payments to the doctors for services they provide, and doubling the Colorado Medicaid population.

These are just disguised forms of socialized medicine.

Similar programs already have been tried in states and other countries. They have all failed, resulting only in higher costs and lower quality patient care. The TennCare disaster—Tennessee's failed attempt at "universal coverage"—offers an important lesson for Colorado.

Read it all, and email it to anyone you know in the healthcare industry.

For additional articles in defense of individual rights and free markets in medicine, visit the website of FIRM ( Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine). This organization is worthy of everyone’s selfish support.

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