As a general rule, I avoid “healthy” food whenever possible. I
try to eat things with extra fat and lots of additives. This is a
conscious strategy that should assure that I keel over before being
left to the tender mercies of Medicare after the Obama
administration has transformed it into a system that rations care
based on a Byzantine formula that purports to measure how many
“quality” years of life a patient has left. Moreover, if I consume
enough chemical additives, I can save my family some money by
arriving at the funeral home pre-embalmed.
For a brief period this week, however, I was on the verge of
bestowing my custom on Whole Foods Market, despite its deplorable
policy of “selling the highest quality natural and organic products
available.” Why? Because it seemed that the grocery chain’s CEO,
John Mackey, was that elusive creature for whom Diogenes searched
so fruitlessly — an honest man. Mackey is currently promoting his
new book,
Conscious Capitalism, and has therefore subjected himself
to a series of media interviews, including one recently broadcast
on NPR.
During that
interview, he was asked if his opinion of Obamacare had changed
since he wrote, in the Wall Street Journal, “All countries
with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their
citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce treatments.” He
answered as follows: “Technically speaking, it’s more like fascism.
Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In
fascism, the government doesn’t own the means of production, but
they do control it — and that’s what’s happening with our health
care programs and these reforms.”
One can imagine the gasps with which that “clarification” was
received by the people on the set of Morning Edition. And
it must have caused the Obamazombies among his Whole Foods customer
base to react as if they had discovered lamb chops lurking among
the bean sprouts and bottles of carrot juice. As the good folks at
NPR gleefully noted in an update, “Many of you wrote in to tell us
you were taken aback by Whole Foods top executive John Mackey
characterizing the health law as fascism in an NPR interview, and
apparently, he’s feeling a little sheepish.”
This was their way of gloating about the belligerence
with which he was questioned about his heresy by Norah O’Donnell on
CBS This Morning. His response to her
interrogation was disappointingly craven: “Well, I think that was a
bad choice of words on my part … What I know is that we no longer
have free enterprise capitalism in health care, it’s not a system
any longer where people are able to innovate, it’s not based on
voluntary exchange. The government is directing it. So we need a
new word for it. I don’t know what the right word is.”
OK, Mr. Mackey, if it’s not socialism and it’s not fascism and
it’s not capitalism, what precisely is it? The humbled Whole Foods
magnate made another attempt to arrive at acceptable nomenclature
on Thursday while
prostrating himself before the thought police at HuffPost
Live: “I regret using that word now because it’s got so much
baggage attached to it.… Of course, I was just using the standard
dictionary definition.… I think I’m going to use the phrase
government-controlled health care. That’s where we’re evolving to
right now.”
There is, of course, a reason the word “fascist” has “baggage
attached to it.” As Mackey gratuitously (or perhaps not) explained
to O’Donnell, “That word has an association with dictatorships in
the 20th Century, like Germany and Spain and Italy.” He might have
added that an important feature of these regimes was
“government-controlled health care,” as he has now decided to call
it. Another distinctive feature that they shared was a conspicuous
dearth of free expression, particularly where unpopular government
programs were concerned.
Mackey is, of course, not alone in using the “F” word in
relation to Obamacare. In fact, as Jeffrey Lord
noted yesterday, constitutional expert Mark Levin used it in a
discussion about a new executive order that will “clarify the
Affordable Care Act” to encourage doctors to ask patients if they
own guns: “There are some things in his executive orders that are
un-American. In some ways they’re even fascistic. Doctors are
private citizens. Do we really want doctors reporting to the
federal government.… How is that going to stop any crime?”
Levin normally uses the term “tyranny” when he discusses the
policies of our recently re-elected President. And perhaps that is
the best term. Obamacare goes far beyond what Mackey calls
“involuntary exchanges directed by the government.” It is part of a
larger and far more insidious project that seeks to stamp out free
expression as well as free enterprise. It is a project that permits
the HHS secretary to issue illegal gag orders to private companies
and encourages Americans to browbeat their fellow citizens into
recanting when they hold verboten opinions.
Interesting how that word, “verboten,” spontaneously springs to
mind when thinking about this episode. And, oddly enough, the most
virulent of those 20th century fascist dictatorships to which
Mackey referred while groveling to the media bullies was led by a
vegetarian. I think I’ll stay away from Whole Foods after all.
