Week of Quotes Part 4

Today begins the official national debate over the healthcare system and whether to nationalize much of the industry. One may hear a certain refrain about many political issues, but this particular refrain is used often in our healthcare discussions. It goes like this: "Look at Europe! They've got it figured out. Let's socialize our medicine because it works for them. And they are so much more refined than we are, anyhow." While I find the comment mildly amusing for many reasons (Europe's population is declining, they have little international relevance anymore, and their economy is worse off than ours), I think an appropriate historical response should come from the book Democracy in America by Alexis De Tocqueville. De Tocqueville was a Frenchmen who visited America in the 1830s, and much of the book describes how the American form of civil government far surpasses that of Europe. The following quote is relatively unrelated to socialized medicine, but consider it anyhow. Do these truths remains almost 200 years later?

The partisans of centralization in Europe are wont to maintain that the
government can administer the affairs of each locality better than the citizens
could do it for themselves: this may be true, when the central power is
enlightened, and the local authorities are ignorant; when it is alert, and they
are slow; when it is accustomed to act, and they to obey. Indeed, it is
evident that this double tendency must augment with the increase of
centralization, and that the readiness of the one and incapacity of the others
must become more and more prominent. But I deny that it is so, when the
peolpe are as enlightenened, as awake to their interests, and as accustomed to
reflect on them, as the Americans are. I am persuaded, on the contrary,
that, in this case, the collective strength of the citizens will always conduce
more efficaciously to the public welfare than the authority of the
government.

De Tocqueville, Democracy in America

So, those for centralization distrust the people to adjudicate problems for themselves. Those for centralization of power today are liberals. Liberals thus distrust the populace. According to De Tocqueville, the enlightened public should get to decide for itself.

Isn't it ironic, then, that those who want the government to stay out of people's private lives (read: abortion) when it comes to issues of life and death, completely reverse their opinion when it comes to issues about life quality. Those same people actually want the government to intrude egregiously into our lives (read: socialized medicine).