Perhaps you saw an article from the Sunday Times of London, which made the rounds here in the U.S. the other day. The headline: “Daughter saves mother, 80, left by doctors to starve.” It is a horrifying story (find it here). The daughter “says she had to fight hospital staff for weeks” before her mother was given artificial feeding. “My mother was going to be left to starve and dehydrate to death.” Hospital practices are “a subterfuge for legalised euthanasia of the elderly on the NHS.”

That would be the National Health Service in Britain, of course. Some weeks ago, Sarah Palin made reference to “death panels,” which struck many people as absurd, hysterical, and irresponsible. Maybe. But Americans ought to think long and hard before going the way of Britain, Canada, and other such places, when it comes to health care. There are awful questions to be faced. Even Barack Obama faced them, back when he could afford, as he apparently sees it, the luxury of candor.

Do you remember when the governor of Colorado, many years ago, talked about “a duty to die” and autumn leaves and all that? That may not have been the most ingratiating politics, but that was candor! Socialized medicine is more than “making sure everyone is covered.” It has an unseemly, even a ghastly, side. “Look before you leap” is an expression that comes to mind.

‐I guess that “socialized medicine” is a verboten term now. Shouldn’t be. And why in the world should socializers be touchy about it?

‐I believe my favorite name of any group is the name of an anti-euthanasia group. It’s called Not Dead Yet.

‐A few days before the election last year, I made an observation on the Corner that kicked up a little fuss. (The Corner, as you know, is this site’s group blog.) I had just been to Vermont, and reported what I heard — and what rang true to me: Wealthy people who had moved to Vermont for the skiing and so on were going to vote for Obama and Biden; ordinary Vermonters — native people of modest means — tended toward McCain and Palin. I also mentioned what I had sensed in New York — in Manhattan, that is: The rich were all for the Democrats, and the Republicans I could find tended to be people who worked for the rich: doormen, drivers, and so on. This seemed to me so true as to be almost too obvious to state.

When I was young, I was taught that the Republicans were the party of the rich, and the Democrats the party of the poor, plain and simple. And then when I grew up: It wasn’t so plain and simple. I remember working at golf courses, making minimum wage. And wealthy liberals would come through harrumphing and clucking that the Republicans were the party of the rich. That was a little rich.

Anyway, when I did this Corner note, some people dumped on me, including on our blog itself: How could I be so naïve and sloppy? How sad that I lived outside “the reality-based community”! People like me simply had “different ways of knowing.”

After Election Day, there were reports of a significant shift of the rich to the Democratic party. And, this week, there was a news item that said, “Democratic members of the House of Representatives now represent most of the nation’s wealthiest people, a sharp turnaround from the long-standing dominance that Republicans have held over affluent districts.”

Just kind of interesting, is all. Maybe we can settle for accepting that there are rich people, poor people, and medium people in both parties? And, just FYI: If you run into ski-chalet owners in Vermont, or well-heeled denizens of Manhattan, don’t bet the ranch they’re Republican, if you value your ranch at all.

‐I know a conservative journalist who works for a mainstream — let’s say establishment — newspaper. (Her presence reflects what I might call a righteous tokenism.) I asked whether there were any other conservatives around. She said only the janitors and the printing-press guys. That rang very true, to me.

‐May I mention that I don’t have anything against the rich? And wouldn’t mind joining their ranks my own bad self?

‐You might have seen a story highlighted by the Drudge Report earlier this week: “Apartment residents told to take down U.S. flags.” Find it here. This occurred in Albany, Ore. And it is the kind of story that may make your blood boil, if you have a certain kind of blood. I am not talking about race or ancestry; I’m talking about thought. The Drudge-circulated story informed us, “Residents we talked to who had been approached to take down their flags all told us the same thing: that management told them the flags could be offensive because they live in a diverse community.”

You might wonder what a loss of civilizational confidence looks like: It looks, in part, like this.

‐May I get back to the rich-man, poor-man thing? I love something I once heard Phil Gramm, the former senator, say. He said there came a time when “I got sick of being told by people who had never been poor what it was like to be poor.” Gramm knew better than they. And that was one of the things that made him such an effective candidate. He could not be cowed or bullied, on class grounds. Really nice.

‐I should preempt a little mail (or a lot): People will tell me that Gramm was a lousy candidate, because he failed in his presidential bid. Okay — but he got elected in Texas time after time after time. He was a fabulous candidate, who had a bad presidential outing when that bell rang. As he will tell you (and as he told me, in this piece here).

‐Let me return to the theme of civilizational confidence, and the loss of it. You may remember that, some months ago, the faculty at Brown University voted to change the name of Columbus Day to Fall Weekend — because Columbus is a villain, you know. I did some writing about this. And a reader reported the following, earlier this week:

Hi, Jay:
My wife and I went to the Brown-Holy Cross football game, along with a friend — this was the Saturday before Columbus Day. My wife and I wore “Italia” shirts, and our friend wore a “Ciao, Firenze!” shirt — plus, he equipped his kids with small Italian flags. All of us, respectfully, I think, went about wishing people a happy Columbus Day.
An especially interesting encounter took place as we were entering Brown Stadium. The ticket-taker, an elderly gentleman of Italian descent, commented on how he liked our shirts. I told him that we were wearing them because it was Columbus Day. Glancing quickly right and left, he whispered, “Not around here, it isn’t.”
I find it strange that a school in one of the most heavily Italian cities in the country would choose to ban a holiday that has become a celebration of Italian-American heritage.

Well, that’s almost the least of it, but it is true.

One more thing: Our reader reminds me that the Holy Cross teams are called . . . the Crusaders. Is that the most un-PC name in the country now, or what? Beats “Cherokees” or whatever by miles.

‐Last week, a reader sent me a Mike Rogers video, here. Who is Mike Rogers? A congressman from Michigan, Republican. Conservatives have been circulating videos of him, as he talks about health care — the Democrats’ plans, in particular. I don’t know that Rogers has “gone viral.” But he has won the appreciation of many.

He makes the case against ObamaCare, and for health care rooted in traditional American liberty, in an informed and eloquent way. He’s passionate, too — sometimes too passionate, but that is forgivable. He is fearless before the majority Democrats, taking Henry Waxman, for example, to school. Rogers’s line is that American liberty has brought huge blessings — ones not to throw away at this juncture. There is no need to turn to socialism, or quasi-socialism; Americans can provide for themselves better than the government can provide for them. If there are problems with health insurance, which there are, why not address those, says Rogers, instead of upending our entire way of doing things?

Of course, other Republicans are taking this line, too. But Rogers seems to have struck a chord. And he has helped shape Republican alternatives that answer the question, “Well, what are the Republicans prepared to do about health care?” He has not gone viral, with these videos, but he has nourished a conservative population hungry for spokesmen and advocates.

‐I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to watch Ezra Levant’s and Mark Steyn’s testimony in the Canadian parliament. You should. You may well pulse with pride for your civilization — a liberal-democratic one. Levant and Steyn were talking against Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. This is the section that allows government officials to investigate and punish online “hate speech.” Both Levant and Steyn have been hauled up for, essentially, warning against capitulation by liberal democrats to radical Islam. Steyn began his testimony,

Something has gone badly wrong in the Canadian state’s conception of human rights:
Until last month, Section 13 had a 100 percent conviction rate: Even Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Il understand that you don’t want to make the racket look too obvious.
Under Section 13, citizens are subject to lifetime speech bans — not in the Soviet Union, not in Saudi Arabia, but in Canada.
Section 13 prosecutes not crimes but pre-crimes. Crimes that have not yet taken place. The phrase “pre-crime,” by the way, comes from a dystopian science-fiction story written by Philip K. Dick in 1956. Half-a-century later, in one of the oldest, most stable democratic societies on the planet, we’re living it.

And this is how Steyn concluded his testimony:

Section 13’s underlying philosophy is incompatible with a free society; its effect is entirely irrelevant to the queen’s peace; and its use by agents of the “human rights” commission has been corrupted and diseased beyond salvation. It is time for the people’s representatives to defend real human rights and end this grotesque spectacle.

I have quoted only Steyn, but both Mark and Ezra were magnificent in their defenses of free speech — magnificent in their prepared testimony, and magnificent in their answers to questions. These men were informed, measured, wise — and stylish. See the videos on Ezra’s website, here. Who could have known that one of the most stirring happenings of the entire year would take place in, of all venues, the Canadian parliament?

And it is very interesting that, in these times, the burden of defending basic liberty has fallen to people known as right-wingers. As an old Ann Arbor kid, I find that very, very interesting, and astounding.

‐There are some things beyond my capacity to analyze, and I would place anti-Semitism on this list: high on it. In a recent Impromptus, I wrote, “ I am astonished, not for the first time, at the power of anti-Semitism, and the power of an anti-Israeli feeling: how the tentacles of this hostility reach into everything.” I then talked about how Zelaya, holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, complained that he was being poisoned with radiation by Israelis outside. I said, “Now, where did he learn to talk like this, or to think like this, if he thinks it? (He could be playing to the gallery.) (But where did the gallery learn it?) I guarantee you that Israel has better things to do — such as stave off destruction by Iran — than poison a Central American fool.”

I was reading another story about Honduras, here. The news director of a radio station said, “I believe it should have been fair and valid to let Hitler finish his historic vision.” The man later apologized for this remark and noted that his grandfather had been a Jewish refugee from Europe. So was the news director, in the first instance, saying he wished he — he himself — had never been born? Some things are too deep to grapple with, too deep for me, that is. All I know is: You have to counter these people, without rest.

‐A little language? Not from me, but from a reader: He writes,

Mr. Nordlinger,
I thought you might get a kick out of something my two-year-old told me. When we put him in his car seat, we tell him to put his arms through the straps so we can “strap him in.” Driving along the other day, he apparently wanted to get out of his car seat because he asked me to “strap him out.” Interesting language we have.

Isn’t it?

‐Finally, will tell you something funny — sort of funny. Yesterday, I took the train from New York to Washington. I sat in the “Quiet Car” — you’re not supposed to talk to your seatmate, talk on your cellphone, etc. And the conductor — or whatever you call the person in charge of tickets and all that — could not stop talking. He yakked over the PA system almost the entire time, very loud. He thought he was a radio personality or something — he was working out his inner entertainer, and this was his gig. He talked every few minutes or so, especially about the rules of the Quiet Car: how you couldn’t talk, etc. And, I say again, this was at an extremely high volume.

This trip was probably the noisiest — the unquietest — I have ever had. And there I was, in the Quiet Car. It was 50 percent funny and 50 percent annoying, even-steven.

Have I complained enough in this column? I think so. I hope there were at least a few items, or words, that were complaint-free! And, hang on, I want to do one more item — which will certainly not be complaint-free.

‐Frankly, I’m so angry about this, I’m not sure I should write about it. I’m even a little shaken, and perhaps you are, too. Let me be blunt: The effort to keep Rush Limbaugh from participating in a bid on a football team was disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. For many years now, we have witnessed an attempt to banish Rush to the margins of American life. To make him a pariah in our society, a non-person. In recent times, this effort has been led by the White House itself. The Left at large is portraying Rush as unfit to be part-owner of a football team, or to do much else in American life. This is why I was pleased when he was named, just the other day, a judge in the Miss America contest: It was evidence that the effort to ostracize Rush was failing. The anathematization of him was not complete. But, after this football thing, as I have said, I find myself a little shaken. Like you, quite possibly, I have read newspapers from front to back for many years. And the news — or at least opinion journalism — is my business. It takes a hell of a lot to shake me. Most things are yawny, even when they’re evil. But this Rush-NFL thing has shaken me, just a bit.

I wish Rush’s friend Bill Buckley were here to write about those who have lied about Rush, and tell them to get bent. No one was better than Bill when in high, righteous, perfectly justified dudgeon. In America, the worst thing you can do to someone is brand him a racist. That scarlet “R” is what signifies non-personhood in America. And when you seek to slap it on someone, you seek to destroy him.

About Rush, they have lied and lied and lied (as they once did about Bill, cruelly and vainly). Lies will prevail only in the short term. That is, they will not prevail at all — because truth is always the victor. Keep going, Rush, keep going.

Like he needs to be told!

#JAYBOOK#