Having long endured the indignity of marriage to a man accused of
pawing women like Kathleen Willey and one rape charge from
Juanita Broaddrick, Hillary Clinton was annoyed earlier this week
at the apparent deference shown to her husband in rape-ravaged
Africa. “I’m not going to be channeling my husband,” she said
bitterly in response to a Congolese student who wanted from her a
wifely report on his latest political thoughts, or so she
assumed.
According to press reports, the question, “What does Mr. Clinton
think?,” was garbled by a translator. The student was actually
referring to President Obama. No matter; Hillary scented sexism
and pounced. “Wait, you want me to tell you what my husband
thinks? My husband is not the secretary of state. I am.”
The exchange would have been even more interesting had the
translator botched the question further and asked her to sketch
Bill’s thoughts on the exploitation of women, the subject of her
visit to the Congo.
Maureen Dowd
suggests another reason for her annoyance: while she was
sweating it out in the Congo, Clinton was goofing off in Las
Vegas. “She may have been steamed about Bill celebrating his
upcoming 63rd birthday in Las Vegas with his posse. The Times’s
Adam Nagourney irritated Clinton Inc. when he reported that Bill
went to the pricey Craftsteak restaurant at the MGM Grand Hotel
Monday night with Hollywood moguls Steve Bing and Haim Saban, and
former advisers Terry McAuliffe and Paul Begala, among others.”
In other words, as Hillary was meeting with sexually abused
women—the recruitment of more female police officers in the
Congo, by the way, was proposed as one solution at the NGO
meetings—Clinton was doing a post-Korea victory lap in the city
of Tailhook.
But Americans, even without the distraction of her outburst,
probably wouldn’t have paid much attention to her reports on
human rights abuses in the Congo anyways. They are more
interested these days in human rights abuses at home. “Death
panels” have become a First World, not Third World, subject.
“The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that
somehow the House of Representatives voted for ‘death panels’
that will basically pull the plug on Grandma,” Obama said the
other day. This from a politician who declared last year in a
debate with Hillary that his biggest regret as a senator was not
supporting more loudly those who called for Terri Schiavo’s
death.
There is no reason to take Obama’s denials seriously. Why,
logically, wouldn’t his government-run health care include death
panels? He who pays the piper calls the tune, and the
pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia federal government under him is the
only piper here.
Given that the federal government already forces all Americans to
pay for abortions at home and abroad, why would it abstain from
doing so under a new health care regime? Whatever is enacted will
reflect the moral philosophy of the Obama administration, which
rests on the assumption that the lives of the unborn, disabled,
and elderly are worth less than the strong. Rationing would
inevitably proceed on this principle.
Under a health care regime informed by Obama’s moral philosophy,
the right to die will quickly become a duty to die; the right to
abort a disabled child will become a duty to abort a disabled
child. Look at the death panels in Holland, where, as one
official there has put it, the “culture” decides who is worthy of
continued care. These forecasts aren’t “scare tactics,” as Obama
calls them, but an obvious recognition of what liberalism has
already sanctioned in our lifetimes.
After eight years of indulging unseemly protests, the
establishment left has suddenly taken an interest in “civility.”
Perhaps we’ll hear them again call for “civility commissions,” an
opportunistic tactic they tried after Republicans took over
Congress in 1994. The citizenry, they feel, isn’t sufficiently
servile yet, and will need more exposure to “civility” panels in
order to train them to accept placidly death ones.
