Opposing compulsory health Insurance purchases is just like slavery

No really. Frank Harris III at the Hartford Courant says so. I'll skip the part where I fisk his thesis because it's too easy and it avoids dealing with larger pathology displayed in the article.

Talking about slavery makes folks uncomfortable. It was so long ago, I know. And doggone it Frank, what do you mean doing what you are about to do: proclaim those jilted Republicans as acting out a slave-era legacy in their opposition to the Supreme Court's ruling that found "Obamacare" constitutional... Those who had the least suffered the most when it came to health then, just as they do today. Life expectancy for the poor — And who was poorer than a slave? — was far below that of whites. Life expectancy for blacks today remains and has always been lower than whites. Infant mortality is high, too... It's 2012 and Republicans seem determined to rally their supporters against health care like the Confederacy rallied its citizens against the North's efforts to destroy their slave-based way of life.

Let's unpack the reasoning here.

1. Blacks were slaves then and we didn't take care of their health.
2. We are still not taking care of their health.

Connecting A to B is the work of a man who on some level still sees black people as slaves who need to be "saved" and "taken care of" because they cannot take care of themselves. Liberals rarely put forward this formula quite so openly, but it's at the heart of the old elitist liberalism. Harris is accusing us of being "irresponsible slaveowners". We aren't taking care of our black people. Think about the Emancipation Proclamation, think about Juneteenth and the Fourth of July, and think about the whole rotten assumption that rather than setting everyone free, what we really need is a massive slave state for everyone built on the power of guilt. Think about the contempt for black people who are being treated as if they have no ability to take care of themselves. And think about how pervasive this reasoning is in liberal thinking. Harris accuses us of protecting a "slave-based way of life", but who really has the slave-based way of life? Is it the people who want slaves or the people who don't want slaves? Is it the people who believe that we should be free or the people who believe we should be subservient to the proper authorities who will care for us? The assumption made by Harris is the same one made by slaveowners, that black people cannot care for themselves. That they must be wards... for their own good. Post-slavery the argument becomes that we must all be wards... for the good of black people. How much of the welfare state squats on the obscene proposition that black people are unable to take care of themselves? How much of the misery and troubles of black people in America comes from all the do-gooders who have helped wreck their finances and communities with freebies, subsidies, privileges and leaders who want nothing more than to control where the freebies go? How many black children have been snatched away from their families to be raised by benevolent white people? How many imported from Africa for the same purpose? Does it end at our borders? Absolutely not. How many articles have there been written about the damage done to Africa's domestic industries by the volumes of aid sent there by Westerners? Textiles, construction and agriculture are in trouble because Africa is swamped with foreign aid by white people who want to take care of all the black people who can't take care of themselves. Do that anywhere and it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more people are treated as unable to fend for themselves, the less likely they are to fend for themselves, and the more charity they need, until the process becomes completely unsustainable. Turning an entire race into charity cases should be considered a war crime, instead of a humanitarian act. Building a system of political rule based on an entire race being treated as a charity case is racism and tyranny mixed together into an ugly combination. And yet it is the basis for liberal political power.