In 2003, Newt Gingrich wrote Saving Lives & Saving Money: Transforming Health and Healthcare. It does offer some “free market” solutions. But doctors are apparently free only as long as they do what Newt thinks they should.

The backup plan is: “When all else fails, mandate.” Specifically, physicians who “insist on doing it the old way…should simply not be allowed to practice medicine.” As far as I know, even Obama doesn’t go this far.

In developing his plans and strategies, the CHT boasts a lot of allies: along with top leaders in federal and state governments, it includes “key corporations, top hospitals, disease advocacy groups, professional and industry associations, and leading research institutions.” Many if not all of them probably endorsed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”).

Newt has embraced the key fallacy that “the number of uninsured in America is a threat to our civilization.” He thinks that medical errors are “morally unacceptable,” and that they could somehow be prevented by forcing everybody to use the health information technology that his supporters, just coincidentally, happen to sell. He speaks favorably of outgoing CMS director Donald Berwick, an avowed admirer of the British National Health Service’s rationing system. He is convinced that “disease management programs” can” dramatically improve outcomes.”

Apparently, what Newt thinks we need to do is to get all medical care paid for (or denied) by approved third parties and all health information into a form that permits monitoring and surveillance. Cost escalation because of third-party payment; difficulty defining what a “medical error” is in the absence of an infallible judge; potentially deadly outcomes related to software flaws; absence of evidence that existing disease management and other schemes either save money or improve health—none of these are problems for a big-idea man like Newt.

Newt avoids obvious gaffes like accusing doctors of taking out tonsils or cutting off legs just to make more money. He sticks to generalities such as the need to “drag the medical system into the 21^st century.” That system provides miraculous imaging technology and marvelous advances in noninvasive surgical techniques, but falls down on having information on your every sniffle accessible to the System.

Although he has no apparent qualifications in medicine or science, he seems to think all doctors could benefit from government supervision, and he freely offers his own health advice. For example, you should vote for zoning changes that encourage walking, and wash dishes with your nondominant hand.

The Gingrich “transformation” doesn’t look all that different from Obama’s to me—either in concept or in the cheerleaders it appeals to. Based on the tone of the book, the two men also don’t seem to be that different in level of self esteem, condescending attitude, or tendency to sermonize.

In my review of the book for the Journal of the American Medical Association on Jan 14, 2004,  I wrote that “this book is primarily useful as a guide to the mind of Newt Gingrich.” It also showed his political ambitions, featuring 14 pages of photographs of himself with dignitaries, babies, and constituents.

Perhaps Newt has been converted from his dedication to top-down central planning for American medicine, and really would repeal ObamaCare without “replacing” it with something very similar. He should know that before absolution comes confession and repentance. So far, I haven’t heard a disavowal of this book.

Berwick’s fate was sealed early this year when 42 GOP senators—more than enough to derail his confirmation—asked Obama to withdraw his nomination. His resignation takes effect Dec. 2.

Berwick’s statements as an academic praising Britain’s government-run health care had become a source of controversy in politically polarized Washington. Although he later told Congress that “the American system needs its own solution” and Britain’s shouldn’t be copied here, his critics were not swayed.

In an email to his staff, Berwick said he leaves with “bittersweet emotions.”

“Our work has been challenging, and the journey is not complete, but we are now well on our way to achieving a whole new level of security and quality for health care in America, helping not just the millions of Americans affected directly by our programs, but truly health care as a whole in our nation,” Berwick wrote.

Read more here.

In all of these instances – from London to Milwaukee, Santiago to Philadelphia, one common factor exists: Young people, who have been endowed with a falsely elevated sense of self-esteem, are narcissistically demanding more from a grossly over-extended government entitlement system instituted by Progressives to create a dependent populace. Why would anyone want to create such an unstable and dangerous societal atmosphere? Power.

In its detailed examination of Progressivism, DiscoverTheNetworks.org, states:

“In the progressive worldview, the proper role of government was not to confine itself to regulating a limited range of human activities as the Founders had stipulated, but rather to inject itself into whatever realms the times seemed to demand. The progressives reasoned that although America’s Founders had felt it necessary to limit the power of government because of their experience with King George III, government, as a result of historical evolution, was no longer the menace it once had been; rather, they believed government had become capable of solving an ever-greater array of societal problems — problems the Founders could never have envisioned. Consequently, the progressives called for a more activist government whose regulation of people’s lives was properly determined not by the outdated words of an anachronistic Constitution, but by whatever the American people seemed to need at any given time…

“As its name indicates, progressivism suggests movement toward a goal – in this case, bigger government and increased state control. But it is a gradual, incremental movement rather than a sudden transformation. Progressives endorse evolution (rather than revolution), a process by which society drifts gradually but inexorably toward statism.

“To facilitate this evolution, progressives have sought, ever since their entry into the pages of American history, to infiltrate society’s power structure and its key institutions – the schools, the media, the churches, the entertainment industry, the labor unions, and the three branches of government…”

We can see the intervening hand of Progressivism at the root cause of the civil unrest in Britain, Chile and the United States.

To focus on just one avenue that the Progressive movement has been successful in traveling, they have, for over a generation now, maintained a stranglehold on the American education system. Regardless of the fact that every school district is set up to be locally controlled, for reasons meant to benefit the immediate community, labor unions and special interest groups – enabled by over-reaching state and federal governments – have wrestled control of not only the classroom from locally elected school board authority, but curriculum as well. Today, instead of teaching critical thinking skills so that our children learn how to think; so that they learn how to educate themselves for their lives, Progressives have instituted an education system that teaches our children what to think. Putting it bluntly, they have instituted a system of education that indoctrinates our children into a Progressive line of thinking.

Again from DiscoverTheNetworks.org:

“In 1913, the Progressive historian Charles Beard published “An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States,” which offered a Marxist view of history…It portrayed America’s Founding Fathers as basically selfish men who had established a form of government that they thought would benefit them, and only them, financially. From Beard’s premise, it was a short logical leap to discredit the Constitution itself as ‘essentially an economic document’ unworthy of the lasting reverence of legislators, judges, or ordinary citizens…”

To spotlight this tactic as it is used today, I need only allude to the many instances and stories emanating from the many classrooms that report the use of curriculum portraying our Founders and Framers as bigoted and racist slave owners, rather than the guardians of liberty who struggled during the debates of both the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution over the issue of slavery.

An accurate reading of history includes the fact that Thomas Jefferson had included the abolishment of slavery in the Declaration of Independence only to have it removed after a vicious debate on the subject. It was only removed to facilitate the enlistment of the whole of the colonies in the revolution. Yet, today, Progressive curriculum teaches our children that Jefferson was not only a slave owner, but that he had fathered a child by one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. Today’s history lesson of Mr. Jefferson omits the fact that there were seven Jefferson men with the same DNA at Monticello during the time that Ms. Hemings would have been with child. The lesson also omits, almost in total, any examination of the philosophy held by Mr. Jefferson with regard to humanity, revolution, government or society. Today, Jefferson, instead of being a brilliant visionary and a part of the creation of unique system of government new to all the world, he is a slave owning White man who impregnated a slave.

This singular example of Progressive manipulation established, understood and accepted, one of the most damaging and manipulative tactics used by the Progressive Movement in our education system is the artificially elevated self-esteem of our children. Today, Progressives instill in our children an unearned sense of self-worth; a falsely elevated self-esteem. Teachers and group administrators have been deceived into believing that by manufacturing a faux pride usually reserved for the realization of an achieved success, they can advance the educational capabilities of the child. These useful, albeit in many cases well-meaning, “idiots,” as it were, have taken to eliminating the need to keep score at recreational sporting events, to awarding first prizes to everyone, to making sure “everyone is a winner,” etc.

In reality, depriving a child of “learning how to lose” deprives them – robs them – of the critical lesson of how to learn from their failures – a lesson more valuable than learning how to achieve. And when a child has no skill set that can address failure; no skill set to derive a lesson from the failure so as to turn that failure into a victory, into a learning experience, into a success, what the “system” has created is an angry, frustrated individual possessing an entitlement mindset but who is less the critical thinking tools to affect achievement on an individual level. The Progressive education “system” has been producing individuals who believe they are entitled to everything and responsible for nothing.

When we understand the tactics used by the Progressives to affect a generation of those who they can enslave to entitlement, we can more clearly see just how much damage they have already done.

As British new media columnist John Phelan points out in addressing the riots engulfing the streets of Britain:

“There was always the danger that people on the left would seek to use this unrest as a vehicle for their own pet causes. Ken Livingstone proved again just what an irrelevant lump of 80’s nostalgia he is by blaming, not the current government, but that of Margaret Thatcher. Others have consulted their A-level sociology textbooks and pinned the blame on the rioting youths’ ‘disenfranchisement’ or ‘deprivation.’

“None of this third rate Marxist rubbish holds up if you leave the lecture hall and come face to face with the rioters. It is almost impossible to think of a way these people are disenfranchised. Each and every one of them has the franchise. When they reach 18 they will have the right to vote. They may choose not to use it, but that’s up to them.

“Neither did the rioters I saw look particularly deprived. The closest things they have to uniforms are Franklin & Marshall jumpers, which retail for about £60 each. Most of them were filming their rampages on iPhones which can retail at over £400.

“The poverty these kids have is moral, not financial. Many of them come from broken families which derive most of their support from the state. Neither they, nor their parents, have ever had to face consequences or take responsibility in their lives. If a girl gets pregnant the state pays. If they’d rather pose about like a gangster than get a job, the state pays. And if they commit a crime state punishment is often a joke. So, they behave as they please.”

In one instance a British rioter, admittedly drinking wine at “half nine in the morning” was quoted as saying, “…that’s what it’s all about, showing the police we can do what we want.” Another youthful looter bragged, “We’re getting our taxes back.”

From Birmingham, UK, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Santiago, Chile, the scene plays out the same. Progressives have succeeded in creating a “Dependent Class” out of a generation of intellectually manufactured narcissists, all in the name of “social justice”; all under the wicked institution of social engineering; all at the hand of Socialism. Today, that “Dependent Class” is angry because the utopian promises made by glad-handing Progressive politicians and elitists to create an all providing nanny state has failed at the weight of the cost of those promises…and the world pays the price.

The unrest in the West is not racially motivated. It is not a battle between the “haves” and the “have nots.” It is the result of a reckless experiment in social engineering executed by the power-hungry that used our children as guinea pigs. What we are witnessing is the natural result of a failed Progressive ideology and the intellectual destruction of a generation. What we are witnessing is the result of a true crime against humanity.

Sadly, no court in the world will hold the Progressive monsters accountable for their crimes…because, my friends, Progressives own the courts.

God help us all.

I knew things were bad when I spoke yesterday to a normally reliably conservative US talk radio show. “But they say they may even have hacked into the phones of 9/11 victims,” said the appalled female co-host, as if this were the ne plus ultra of round, unvarnished evil.

Some perspective, please. I too respect and am moved by the plight of the 9/11 dead and their families. And of the murdered English schoolgirl Milly Dowler and of the servicemen who died in the Iraq war. (They too, apparently, may – and let’s stress that word “may” – have been targets of phone hacking by the now-disbanded Murdoch-owned tabloid newspaper the News of the World).

But then, so do you. So does everybody. No one in the world right now is sitting there rubbing his or her hands in glee and going: “Heh heh. 9/11 victims. Murdered schoolgirls. Dead Iraq servicemen. I’m so glad their mobile phones were hacked into by the News of the World.”

Yet you’d never guess this from the nauseating sanctimoniousness and cant of the left-liberal media, right now. You’d think this was a straightforward battle between good and evil: on one side a wicked, bullying, manipulative, right-wing Voldemort and his hordes of darkness; on the other, the forces of justice, truth and light whose only desire is that our newspapers and broadcast outlets should be transparent and caring and fair and kind to blind old ladies crossing the road clutching baskets of kittens with bandaged paws.

Yeah, right. This is not – pace a projectile-emetic New York Times article- “A kind of British Spring” in which “Democracy, aided, by sunlight has broken out in Britain.” It is, in fact, that very opposite of that: a ruthless, concerted and horrifyingly effective attempt by the dominant left-liberal MSM to silence free speech and crush alternative points of view.

Consider, for a moment, how much worse it would be in the US if you didn’t have talk radio and you didn’t have Fox News or the Wall Street Journal. Just imagine: wall to wall Keith Olberman and Chris Matthews splurging their relentlessly PC take on world affairs; Peggy Noonan and Paul Krugman pulling somersaults in their eagerness to find new inventive ways to explain why, despite all the evidence, the Obama administration is at the top of its game. No Rush to run to for consolation; no Fox & Friends blondes to cheer you up at breakfast; no O’Reilly or Krauthammer or Stossel to stick it where it hurts.

And if you have any trouble imagining such a hideous, terrifying world, just come to Britain where precisely this situation exists. Since 1927, our broadcast media has been dominated by a presence so monolithic and all-powerful it makes Pyongyang’s Korean Central TV look like your local Mom and Pop station.

Its name, of course, is the BBC. During the first Gulf War, it was briefly rechristened the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation – and understandably so, given the relentlessly anti-Coalition bias of its reportage. But then the BBC doesn’t much like the West. Or the capitalist system. Or the US. Or old-fashioned concepts like liberty, freedom of choice, personal responsibility or limited government. It is – and has been for decades – the official broadcast outlet for the values of the progressive left.

On any given subject you know exactly what the BBC’s line will be. If it’s covering the Middle East it will be bigging up the gallant Hezbollah freedom fighters and the plucky Palestinians at the expense of the hateful, damned-near-as-bad-as-the-Nazis Israeli oppressors. If it’s covering the European Union (what you and I might better know as the EUSSR) it will treat every politician who is not in favor of ever-closer-political-integration as a rabid, swivel-eyed crypto-Fascist loon. If its covering any kind of war in which the US or Britain are involved it will be of the view that the enemy are the good guys and that we thoroughly deserve to get our asses whupped. If it’s covering the environment it wil, of course, conclusively demonstrate that the earth is doomed and it’s all the fault of greedy Western capitalists.

None of this would matter – at least not quite so much – if it weren’t for three big problems. The first (a legacy perhaps of its distinguished World War II reporting; or maybe its dignified and majestic royal wedding coverage) is that around the world the initials “BBC” still convey gravitas and authority. The second is that the BBC is committed by its charter to being fair and balanced. It isn’t of course. Not in the slightest. But this does give its defenders (almost all of them on the left) the perfect excuse to defend the BBC’s hegemonic status on the grounds that it represents the whole nation’s diverse viewpoint (and not, as it really does, the achingly PC values of a self-selecting cabal of metropolitan bien-pensant tofu eaters).

The third and worst problem, though, is that there is no counterbalance to the BBC’s relentlessly liberal-left propagandizing. From cradle to grave – starting with the Kim-Jong-Il-Jr-style brainwashing offered by CBBC, moving on to oh-so-hip-Daddy-O pop broadcaster Radio 1, through classical Radio 3 to fuddy-duddily left-liberal Radio 4, not forgetting the achingly worthy and progressive TV channels BBC1, BBC2, BBC3 and BBC4 – the audience for Britain’s dominant national broadcaster is indoctrinated into a very specific Weltanschauung.

That Weltanschauung, you won’t be surprised to hear, does not find much room for concepts like limited government, low taxation, liberty, political sovereignty and accountability. It is extremely unlikely that a Tea Party movement could ever take off in Britain: the main reason being that, unlike in the US, the British simply lack the political vocabulary and intellectual building blocks to demand one.

And of course, the house leftists at the BBC (most of them recruited through the pages of the left-wing Guardian newspaper, which BBC employees tend to believe is also the ONLY newspaper) want to keep it that way. That’s why they have been pushing the “scandalous” Murdoch revelations so hard; that’s why Labour leader Ed Miliband and Tony Blair’s ex-enforcer Alastair Campbell and socialist ex-Prime-Minister Gordon Brown and the pathologically left-wing Twittersphere and, yes, the Guardian newspaper have been so eager to join in the fray. Sure they hate Murdoch, that’s a given. But what they hate far, far more – because they fear it – is the possibility that British audiences should be exposed as US audiences are to dangerously conservative concepts like freedom and small government.

This is what Murdoch has been trying to achieve in his bid to buy a majority shareholding in the broadcaster BSkyB. His plan is – or at least was – to hive off the Sky part of the operation (so as to avoid anti-monopoly regulation) and set up the TV channel Britain so badly needs: a UK answer to Fox.

The British government’s culture secretary Jeremy Hunt was due to make a ruling on the issue this week. That’s why the BBC (and its myriad leftist fellow travellers) waited until now to make these “shock” new revelations (using information, of course, they had been sitting on for months if not years). This had nothing to do with justifiable moral outrage – and everything to do with a viciously cynical attempt by the liberal-left to exploit dead schoolgirls, Prime Ministerial children suffering from cystic fibrosis and 9/11 victims in order to protect its hegemonic domination of the media.

And what’s depressing is, the bastards may have have got away with it. It seems genuinely not to have occurred to most of British people now working themselves into a lather of almost Death-of-Princess-Diana-like hysteria over the evils of the Murdoch press that they are duped as the liberal-left’s useful idiots.

If only they were capable of realizing it, they would understand that over the last decades, the BBC has done infinitely more damage to Britain – economically, socially, politically – than anything the yellow journalism of Rupert Murdoch has ever achieved. By setting the parameters of the political debate, the BBC has been responsible for Britain’s cultural surrender to Islamism and “multiculturalism”; for its submission as a vassal to the creaking, moribund European Socialist Superstate; for the current Coalition’s inability either to lower taxes or rein in government spending; for the proliferation of “rights” and dependency culture and the creation of a feckless underclass trained to believe it is government’s job to take care of its every need; for the removal of empiricism, hard science and skepticism in the debate on “global warming”.

Thanks to the BBC, the people of Britain are poorer, more highly taxed and regulated, less able to control their own political destiny and considerably less free. But of course they are not aware of this. How could they when the political outlook they imbibe from birth comes straight from the wrinkled dugs of Big Government’s Nanny In Chief – the BBC?

President Obama and the first lady boarded Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base late Sunday to begin a six-day trip to Europe. Their first stop is Ireland, and the president will also meet with leaders in Britain, France and Poland.

In today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss what America can learn from the austerity measures and big budget cuts in Europe, as well as discussion on the real unemployment rate and the Juan Williams NPR firing.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. You can find our iTunes feed at CoffeeandMarkets.com. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

After Williams’s firing, NPR fears financial backlash
Early Voter ‘Enthusiasm Gap’ Appears Consistent With Polls
Early Voting Numbers in Texas
Hitler’s Nemesis Still Carries a Big Stick: Theodore Bromund
Shocking Video: 60 Minutes Admits Unemployment is Actually 17%, 22% in California

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A few days ago I was thinking that I would like to post something uplifting on Big Government. After all, there is plenty going on right now which is wrong or ludicrous, but perhaps that makes it especially important to focus on what we have to be grateful for in America. Sadly, the best way I can think of to do that is to tell you a few stories about what is wrong and ludicrous in my country, Britain- home of the Magna Carta and the Mother of Parliaments. So here are some stories of common, everyday British madness which I hope will make you feel more optimistic about the USA.

1) From Surrey Today:

A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”.

Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.

The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon.

In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: “I didn’t think for one moment I would be arrested.

“I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets.”

The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden.

In his statement, he said: “I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off shotgun and two cartridges.

“I didn’t know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him.

“At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the table so it was pointing towards the wall.”

Mr Clarke was then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.

Reader, try to fathom what kind of country punishes a man for doing his civic duty, what kind of idiots sit on a jury that takes twenty minutes to sentence him, what kinds of imbeciles framed this law.

Do you feel better about America yet?

2) From the Daily Telegraph, a heart warming tale from Watford where only council-vetted “play rangers” may monitor youngsters in two adventure areas while parents must watch from outside a perimeter fence:

The rules have been imposed at Harwoods and Harebreaks adventure recreation grounds.

Activities on the half acre sites include a skateboard half-pipe, a zip line, rope swings, den building, arts and crafts, plus a wide range of indoor and outdoor sports activities.

Play rangers currently patrol both parks – which are specifically for children aged five to 15 – and are fully qualified and have been cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau.

Parents already have to ‘register’ their child on arrival at the free playgrounds so staff have their contact details in the event of an accident.

But now only those who have been CRB vetted by the council can enter the sites, which are surrounded by six foot high steel and wooden fences.

Mother-of-five Marcella Bergin, 35, has been visiting with her three eldest children, Christy, 15, Seamus, 12, and Chloe, 11, for many years without any problems.

She said: “It’s like they are branding all parents potential paedophiles which is disgraceful – 99 per cent of people are great parents and certainly not child abusers.

“The whole thing is just a joke and I will certainly not be adhering to the new rules which frankly are crazy.”

And thus parents must seek their elected masters’ permission to play with their own children in a park. Reader, try to imagine the cultural climate that makes it possible for officials to pass such a law; each day in Britain brings fresh tales of petty officialdom run amok. What is most sinister here is the state’s assumption that it is authorized to invade so deeply into family life; that parents have to seek a license from the government to play with their own children.

How did it happen? Who permitted it? The line between private and public in the UK has been growing increasingly blurred for a long time. No doubt you know we have more CCTV cameras than China, and that soon every phone call, text message, email and website visit made by private citizens is to be stored for a year and will be available for monitoring by government bodies. We are not to be trusted. We must be watched. In the eyes of government, we are hapless children, and the emphasis in British law has changed from that which is not forbidden is permitted, to that which is not permitted is forbidden.

Do you feel better about America yet?

3) And finally, and on a higher level: this week the European Union will elect its first president- well, sort of. Naturally the electorates of the 27 state bloc will not be voting. They don’t even know who the candidates are. Not to worry, our leaders will decide that for us, behind closed doors. Apparently some Belgian is the front runner, although he refuses even to confirm that he is running. And there’s also a guy from Luxemburg who might win, although Luxemburg isn’t a real country, of course.

There’s a good reason why we haven’t been invited to vote – we might make the wrong decision. After all, France and Holland rejected the European Constitution in their referenda, so it had to be renamed the Lisbon Treaty and made law without consulting voters. Then the Irish rejected even this treaty in a referendum, and so they were forced to vote again until they gave the right result. This would be like a president losing an election and then holding another one and another one until he got the right result (i.e. his re-election). In Russia or Venezuela such tactics would be treated as outrageous, a sick parody of democracy. In Europe, they are par for the course. And nobody does anything. In the UK people grumble, and ridicule the system- but then they go to sleep. The next day they wake up and another bizarre law has been passed, another power given away.

Do you feel better about America yet?

The Tea Parties and Town Hall Meetings this past summer blew my mind. I had no time for the absurd Stalin/Hitler/Dachau rhetoric (I lived in Russia for ten years and can tell you a few things about communism and totalitarianism), but that was just the fringe talking. At root, here were citizens who were angry and enraged, yelling at their leaders, challenging them to justify their actions. They were aggressively defending their rights, their traditions, and their liberties.

Now America has its own share of idiot laws and lawmakers, of course. Perhaps in a few states you also have barking mad regulations like the ones described above. And you do have Nancy Pelosi. But the persistence in this country of so rebellious a spirit, and such a firm conviction that government must serve the people and not vice versa is an excellent thing.

Do you feel better about America yet?