020 – Transcript

Just Right Episode 020

Air Date: August 30, 2007

Host: Bob Metz

Disclaimer:

The views expressed in this program are those of the participants, and do not necessarily reflect the views of 94.9 CHRW.

Bob Metz:

Good morning, London. It is Thursday, August 30th already. I’m Bob Metz and this is Just Right on CHRW 94.9 FM, where we’ll be with you from now till noon. Not right wing. Good morning. Just right.

Welcome to the show where today, if I hope I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew, I’m hoping to get to all these subjects. Yes, it’s true. Hitler was a socialist and I’m going to follow up on that a little later in the show. Also going to talk about those ripoff artists—and it might not be exactly what you think I mean by it—but we’ll get into that later. But first of all, I want to talk a little bit again, as we did last week, about health care being offered by government. By the way, you can call in 519-661-3600 or email us at justrightchrw@gmail.com.

Last week, if you were tuned into the show, my first subject I phrased as insane health care legislation, using the words actually of a private doctor out in Vancouver, BC, who had opened a private clinic and was advocating some more private insurance and other means of paying for health care for Canadians. Also commented on outgoing CMA President Dr. Colin McMillan and talked about what private health care is and what it is not. Well, today is part two of that because since that show last week, if you’ve been watching the papers at all, there’s been a lot of announcements in this regard and we now have a new CMA president.

And basically, what kicked this off—I’m not going to be talking too much about that. Today I’ve brought actually a clip testimony of a doctor who considers himself a refugee both from the British system and from the Canadian system, but you’ll hear from him shortly. But if you read the National Post and the London Free Press, first of all in the Free Press last week, August 23rd, private health care pushed by CMA had just a small clip, which is about all you get from the Free Press if it talks about privatization. The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says the country’s public health care system is headed for a crisis, but a greater role for private health care could be the right prescription. Brian Day said in his inaugural speech to Canada’s medical establishment that contracting out health services isn’t new and has helped slash wait lists. So they’re talking about contracting out, which was in fact an example I gave in the Winnipeg area where the Manitoba government is contracting out to private surgeons and private clinics. Move ahead a little now to August 20th, the National Post. CMA President looks to change funding system privatization. Impossible, it says in an article written by Tom Blackwell on August 20th.

And I quote from that. Dr. Day has steered largely clear of advocating a major new role for the kind of private medicine he himself practices, in the short term at least. Instead, the orthopedic surgeon says he plans to use the new post to lobby for changes in the public system, injecting market principles into the taxpayer-funded hospitals and clinics as a strategy to improve efficiency and reduce wait times. To privatize a Medicare system in Canada would be an impossible task, even if you wanted to, he said in an interview.

But there is no reason to think the public system cannot benefit from exposure to some of the principles that operate in the marketplace. Now he’s talking about funding hospitals according to how many patients they treat, rather than giving them a block of funding, saying the concept has a proven track record in Europe. He argues that his thrust is replacing the current funding system for public hospitals in Canada under which provincial governments hand over a block of annual funding. With no direct incentive to treat patients better or more rapidly, he proposes instead an activity-based system that essentially pays hospitals for each patient they treat, theoretically forcing institutions to cut costs, improve efficiency and compete with one another. As proof of the idea’s value, he points to Britain where such a system was implemented a few years ago and where wait times have been cut substantially. Critics, though, argue that those wait time improvements were a result of large spending increases in the UK’s National Health Service and had nothing to do with that funding model itself. And meanwhile, the article reports, the injections of competition among public facilities has led to unintended and perverse outcomes, such as some hospitals unnecessarily admitting patients just to boost their bottom line, says Britain’s National Health Service Consultants Association.

During a recent visit to the UK, he said he found that many private sector physicians are complaining about lost business as speedier service keeps more Britons in the public system. Now just going back to the original comments of Dr. Day where he’s talking about injecting market principles into a taxpayer-funded institution, that’s simply a contradiction in terms. And when I hear people talking like that, it really bothers me a bit because it gives the idea of the market and market principles and capitalism a bad name. You can’t run market means voluntary—it means everything in the system is voluntary—whereas government is not voluntary.

It’s a system of coercion and using force and taxation. Instead, I have with me today a clip that we’re going to turn to very shortly here. And it is a clip actually recorded here at the University of Western Ontario back on July 25th in the year 2000.

So it’s seven years ago. So bear that in mind when you hear Dr. Tom Dorman, who came to speak to a group of people here at the University for the International Society for Individual Liberty. I was at that event, I saw him speak, I think he was one of the best speakers there and I wish I could play the whole thing for you. But here are some clips from Dr. Dorman. And you’ll hear why he is a refugee from Ontario and he also explains from a doctor’s perspective what insurance is not. Runs about six minutes, hope you stay with us. I think this is something vitally important to hear.

Clip (Dr. Tom Dorman):

Well, thank you for inviting me. I’m actually a refugee from several places, but I’ll tell you about myself being a refugee from Ontario. I used to work in a place called Fort Frances. Any Ontarians here know where that is.

It’s in Northwest Ontario and normally when you speak to people from Toronto they say, Fort where? I was recruited there after I became an internist. I graduated—you can guess from my accent—in Britain. I’m an Edinburgh graduate. My responsibilities were there to run an intensive care unit and service the local community for internal medicine issues such as hypertension and diabetes and boring things like that. And there arrived in the second year I was there the Minister of Health of the province of Ontario. He came out to the peripheral territories of his domain and it was a great event for our community.

And being the internist of the group practice, I was set next to him at dinner and the conversation went approximately thusly. I suggested you introduce more preventative measures for the population of Ontario. We’d like you to control hypertension, as you probably all know, if hypertension is controlled, longevity is increased. It tends to affect people who are past retirement. The outcome of course is that the population is more healthy. But the other outcome is that there is much more expense.

Because not only are you caring for the person during the time you’re treating him with the preventative measures, but he will still have a balloon expense at the end of his life which will be deferred. And therefore the total expenditure to the exchequer, in the case of the Ontario government, is substantially increased. So I commended the Minister on their excellent care for the population. I, as a Hippocratic physician, was thrilled to partake in this and service them. But please sir, what has been the discussion in the ministry about the actuarial concepts of this increased expense and how are you going to be funding it? And he got very angry with me. He said, our intention is to win the next election and it’s the instruction to us to promote preventative measures because it’s a good political measure and you’re not to be asking this question.

As a matter of fact, we don’t have an actuary in the ministry. And the rest of the dinner was spent with him talking across me to the person on the other side about issues like fishing. That was political lesson one for me and you will understand why I’m a refugee from your province. Let’s talk a little bit about health insurance. Do you all have health insurance? Let’s put it in reverse. Raise your hands those who do not have health insurance.

And there are about a dozen hands. And what do you mean by that? Do you mean that you smoke and you take off your seat belts when you’re traveling at high speed and that you look for accidents and jump from cliffs?

I propose to you that health insurance is good food, exercise, avoidance of accidents, avoidance of toxicants. That is health insurance. Let’s use the English language in an ordinary way. And what is called health insurance?

It’s others pay, others manage, first dollar coverage supported by tax. What it should be—an asset protection in case of catastrophe—that’s what health insurance should be. But what actually is it? It’s asset protection. If you’re concerned about your house burning down, you share the risk through an insurance company with other house owners. And in the unlikely event of a fire, you’re compensated. For that, you voluntarily pay premiums. Is fire insurance on your home mandatory? Of course it isn’t. The notion is ridiculous.

Look how the words have been turned around. We use the words that should be used for good food and moderate exercise for asset protection in case of a heart attack or some other health catastrophe. I propose to you that the concept of insurance contains within it the concept of voluntary—the example of the fire insurance on your house.

If it’s not voluntary, it’s not insurance. When the farmer hires the vet to service his cattle, does the cow have a choice? The concern is maintaining the health of the herd for the benefit of the farmer.

And at a certain point, the expense of the veterinarian care exceeds the value of the cow, and then the cow goes to the abattoir. In what way is it different when we speak about the provision of mandatory doctoring to the population? Logically, there is no difference. And factually there is no difference. The example of the cow makes the point extremely well. So insurance has within it the concept of voluntary, and we need to maintain that essential point when we speak about the word insurance. So universal insurance, mandatory insurance, compulsory insurance is exactly what insurance is not.

Bob Metz:

That was Dr. Tom Dorman speaking here at the University of Western Ontario about seven years ago in July. Welcome back. This is Just Right. I’m Bob Metz, and this is CHRW Radio 94.9 FM, where we will be with you from now until noon.

You can call in 519-661-3600 or email us at justrightchrw@gmail.com. Now, just listening to Dr. Dorman, he had the audience just mesmerized. It was a huge audience.

He talked about his experience with the Ministry of Health here in Ontario, where they told him they don’t have actuaries like an insurance company would if they were actually offering insurance. And of course you don’t need actuaries in a government plan, because all they do is rob Peter to pay Paul. They just transfer money from some people to other people. They don’t really put it in an account with your name on it, invest it on your behalf and make sure that you have a benefit there when you need it.

There is no plan really under the government plan. It’s a contradiction in terms. It’s dog eat dog socialism. But interestingly enough, one of the things that Dr. Dorman went through at the conference there was he explained how once that socialized medicine is in place, there’s a certain pattern. And he gave basically eight steps of what follow.

I’m not going to play them today, but we’ll briefly relate them myself, because we will play that in a future time, but there’s just not time to get his whole dissertation in there. But basically once you’re on this path, number one, money dominates the decision. Whoever pays the piper calls the tune. And if they don’t have the money for what you need, you’re not going to get what you need. You’ll find it will be delisted or taken off the coverage. Government insurance is in the long run no different than private insurance.

Then you get a society where everybody feels that they’re entitled to healthcare, that it’s part of their right, that it has been granted to them by government. In fact, you talk to Canadians, they all think that that’s pretty much what Canada is made of.

That’s what distinguishes us from the United States. And Dr. Dorman refers to this as number two, entitlement leads to greed. And then number three, people become chattels. Just as he explained with the example of the farmer and his cattle. He’ll keep paying for their health until it becomes uneconomical to do so, and that’s exactly what happens. And of course, people aren’t cattle, and you would think that we would have the means to look after ourselves to some degree. Remember, we’re talking about a 100% free medical system, not talking about just emergencies.

When everybody talks about healthcare, you see that hysteria. Everyone talks as if every visit to the doctor was open heart surgery. As if every visit to the doctor was about cancer or some of the worst debilitating diseases or a long-term disability. When in fact the vast majority of what goes on in doctors’ offices and even in hospitals are more on the minor scale, non-life threatening injuries, things that you would think some responsibility should be put on the patient.

But that’s not what buys votes for governments. And unfortunately, it’s a treadmill once we get on it. Number four, costs rise and regulations ensue. You have an unlimited demand on a service. The cost goes up, but they can’t raise the prices because the price is zero.

So in order to control costs, government must regulate. And they do that by limiting access, delisting services, making patients go elsewhere, longer waiting lists. Number five, rationing aggravates the social stress. Patients go through a lot of stress while they’re on waiting lists. And that in fact can debilitate their health to a further degree.

Which of course leads to more regulations. Number six, wait time guarantees. Regulate the regulated stuff. And number seven, healthcare worsens. And number eight, liberty suffers. These are possibly the two least understood parts of the whole healthcare system. Because if the average person goes to the hospital and they get a treatment and they get out, they’ll say, I was treated pretty well.

In fact, just the other day on the front page of the London Free Press they ran an article about how so many patients were very satisfied with the healthcare system. Read that article again and see what the criteria were. And one of them is not waiting lists or time to get in. And certainly not about routine and ongoing surgeries, which often fall prey to this kind of system more so than the serious stuff. Governments can’t afford to let the heart attacks and that kind of issue become the major issue.

Once people perceive that they can’t even get service for that, then that’s the end of socialized medicine and government will not allow that. Which leads me now to another article that appeared a couple days later, reiterating again what Brian Day is saying, but revealing something here. And this is in an August 23rd article by Pamela Filer in the National Post. And the headline reads, short wait lists would limit private care. And they attribute that to Brian Day, the incoming president of the CMA.

Our healthcare system must be redesigned based on rationality, not on rationing, said Brian Day. Boy, do I agree with that statement.

But look at the rest of what he says. The motivation behind our group was simple. Our services were subjected to rationing. Meanwhile, patients waited and waited and waited. Personally, my operating room time dwindled from 22 hours to five hours a week, 10 hours less than the minimum recommended for competence by the Canadian Orthopedic Association. So creating our own place to work seemed the logical thing to do.

Here we are all screaming for healthcare. The doctors are there, but they’re not allowed into the basic healthcare system because it’s busy trying to cut costs.

But here is the kicker. To privatize the Medicare system in Canada would be an impossible task, even if you wanted to, he said. But there is no reason to. I think the public system can benefit from exposure to some of the principles that operate in the marketplace. To say that we should be based on rationality and not rationing and then saying that there’s no reason to privatize, that’s irrational. And of course you can see the self-interest here. Here’s a guy who runs a private clinic, is getting government money funneled through contracting out. Of course he’s going to be in favor of market principles as long as the market comes his way. And that is the problem with so many spokespeople who talk about market principles and capitalism. If you look through the lines you can see they’re not talking about freedom and about free enterprise. They’re talking about a controlled enterprise and a controlled system, where they’re positioning themselves to get more money through the private system.

And that’s just a complete misrepresentation. I think we have to really watch out for that.

Maybe they’re walking a very thin tightrope trying to play both sides of the game a bit because they don’t want to panic people who’ve come to believe that private health care is something horrible and will destroy society as they know it. But that’s where I’ll leave you with on that subject. Now coming up next is one more clip from Dr. Dorman, and I’ll leave you with that in terms of the health care situation. But he just concludes a few other points about how the system works and a little bit about drugs. And on the other side of that, what you’ll be hearing coming out of this break will be Ontario PC leader John Tory talking about arts funding.

And first Dr. Dorman just concluding this subject on health care.

Clip (Dr. Tom Dorman):

But one of the greatest horrors is that most drugs are harmful. Most drugs are harmful ladies and gentlemen. It is true that pharmaceutical agents on occasion are extremely beneficial when used carefully and selectively. But the natural tendency of the hurried doctor in the OHIP plan, or for that matter any socialized system, is to get rid of the patient in a hurry because he’s in a tight schedule and he doesn’t have time to focus on his customer.

He’s got ten minutes. In fact the health maintenance organizations—which is exactly what they’re not, another distortion of language—stress the doctors into getting rid of the customer by writing a prescription. I used to work in Britain. I’m also a refugee from the National Health Service in the United Kingdom where I graduated. There the poor doctors have got about five or six minutes per patient—just long enough to write a prescription and get the person out of the door. The GP where my in-laws go—they’ve got two doors, in and out, and the prescription is on the desk in between the patients. This enhances the turnover conveniently, but the outcome of course is that the patients go to the pharmacy and get some damn drug which probably is not good for him in the large majority of cases.

Is the pharmaceutical business in favour of this? Of course they are because it increases their turnover. And what do they do with some of the money? They plough it into research which finds results which are supportive of the production of new and more drugs. I can tell a series of horror stories on that.

Clip (John Tory):

Our plan is based on the premise that a strong Ontario requires a strong arts and culture sector and that means the government itself has to lead. We have committed in this paper to provide three-year funding commitments for arts institutions and major attractions such as Stratford and including others like Shaw, Sunfest in London, the Ottawa Jazz Festival, Harbourfront, the new Luminato Festival in Toronto. We are going to create an Ontario youth and culture passport and this is going to allow young people under the age of 20 to access cultural institutions across the province including the Stratford Festival.

Again, today’s visitors to Stratford who are young people are going to be tomorrow’s patrons who in turn are going to encourage their kids to like Shakespeare and to attend Stratford and to be an important part of the vibrant cultural life in the province of Ontario. We will create under my leadership the Premier’s Council on Arts, Culture, Creative Cities and Towns and we are going to look to communities like this one with expertise and enthusiasm for arts and culture demonstrated track record to provide counsel and guidance on building this legacy for the future. We will provide better support for our artists. You know it’s deplorable to me that the arts and culture sector is worth billions of dollars to the economy and yet there remains huge disparity between the income levels of artists and those who work in other sectors. And so there are things we can do to provide a greater degree of security and financial viability for the artists including the most vulnerable among them, the child actors. And so our plan is based on the premise that there are things we can do to provide legal protection but also things we can do through the tax system and in other ways to encourage people to be able to remain as artists and to be able to fulfill their own dreams and to be able to showcase their own talents. And I take great pride in the words of Somerset Maugham who said, culture is not just an ornament, it is an expression of a nation’s character and at the same time it is a powerful instrument to mold character.

Bob Metz:

Wow, wasn’t that a powerful message and aren’t you just lining up to buy your ticket at Canada’s local arts councils. Welcome back. It’s Just Right. I’m Bob Metz and you’re listening to CHRW Radio 94.9 FM.

We will still be with you from now till noon. And that was of course John Tory, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.

It’s an example of what governments are willing to spend your tax dollars on. And with that, I introduce the subject of what I’d like to call rip-off artists.

Here’s the pitch. John H. Goddard is the executive director of Theatre Ontario. And he’s among the many people lobbying our politicians who are running in the election now to take money from you, the taxpayer, and to hand it over to his group, among many other groups. And we recently received a letter ourselves, because I’m with the political party, the Freedom Party. And this was a letter addressed to our party leader, Paul McKeever, and it was no doubt addressed to the leaders of all the other Ontario political parties as well. But they suggest that they represent the following groups, just to give you an idea of who’s getting your money.

Dance Ontario. Dance Umbrella of Ontario. Directors Guild of Canada, Ontario. Association of Art Galleries Ontario.

Fusion, the Ontario Clay and Glass Association. Ontario Council of Folk Festivals. Ontario Crafts Council. The Ontario Presenting Network.

Theatre Ontario. Visual Arts Ontario. Those are the groups listed in the letter that was received by the leaders of the political parties here in Ontario, with respect to this current election upcoming for October 10th.

And here is what they actually wrote in their letter. We are a coalition of provincial arts service organizations who, collectively, speak on behalf of thousands of Ontario professional and amateur artists and presenters, and through them reflect the views of hundreds of thousands of Ontario citizens who are the consumers of our collective art. They call themselves Arts Select 07. And they say Arts Select 07 believe that art and culture are as integral to the social fabric of Ontario as our healthcare system and are equally deserving of proper funding and protection.

They think that the arts are just as important to Ontario and our social fabric as is our healthcare system. Canadians long ago rejected the concept of a health system based on a user pay structure. Similarly, Ontarians have accepted for over half a century the principle that our governments have an a priori responsibility to nourish, sustain, foster and promote a vibrant and healthy artistic and cultural community within their society. So here they are using the fact that we’ve already accepted a non-user pay system in the healthcare system to justify that we should have a non-user pay system in arts. If you don’t use it, you pay. If you do use it, you don’t pay.

That’s how socialism works. Here are the five questions that they want the leaders to respond to. Number one, what is your party’s policy on arts education in the school system? And if elected, will your government reinvest in substantial and real terms in this vital component of the total education experience? Number two, if elected, will your government support ongoing and increased funding to the Ontario Arts Council?

Number three, what priority does your party place on the following socioeconomic undertakings outlined in the Status of Ontario’s Artists Act 2007 and what resources is your party prepared to commit to them? A, training and professional development opportunities. B, municipal cultural planning. C, artist health and safety.

D, strengthening arts and culture organizations. Number four, if elected, will your government reinvest in a new multi-year capital infrastructure program for small to mid-sized organizations? And number five, what will your party do to further support and enhance the work of the Ontario Trillium Foundation in the arts and culture sector across the province?

Now let’s look at them and review what they’re really about. Number one is about money. Number two is about money. Number three is about money. Number four is about money. Number five is about money.

They might as well just say, will you give us money? Will you give us money? Will you give us money?

And of course you just heard what John Tory had to say on it. He does share exactly the very principles that you hear outlined here and he’s going to support arts and culture for all the same reasons because he understands the importance of all arts and culture. And as I’ve said before, our arts and our culture are the way that philosophy and ideas get spread through a society so you can understand why government has an interest in having some kind of control over that. Freedom Party leader Paul McKeever has already responded to the Arts Council on this. And I’m just going to summarize some of his overview comments and his reply to Arts Select 07.

Freedom Party regards it as morally repugnant to force people to pay for the promotion of art by spending tax revenues on such organizations and efforts as those listed. We do not put any priority on using the government’s taxation powers to do immoral things. We regard the role of government as the protection of every individual’s life, liberty, and property. Were an art association or organization to resort to mugging, burglary, or bank robbing in order to fund its executive and its efforts, the proper role and duty of government would be to arrest, try, and imprison those engaged in the wrongdoing. To further support and enhance the work of artists across the province, we would free artists and art consumers from the monetary political power of the Ontario Trillium Foundation and leave Ontarians with more of their own earnings so that they, rather than the Ontario Trillium Foundation’s board and employees, can decide which artistic efforts are worthy of payment. When your questionnaire introduction states that art and culture are as integral to the social fabric of Ontario as our healthcare system and are as equally deserving of proper funding and protection, we suspect that patients currently forced to wait in long lines for government healthcare rations would disagree. Ontario’s healthcare funding principle is an envy-inspired moral obscenity.

Freedom Party is of the view that art should be paid for only by those individuals who choose freely to do so. We regard it as morally wrong to force a person to pay for artistic works or efforts if and when they would not do so otherwise voluntarily. We hold government to the same moral standard as that to which we would hold our neighbour. And we cannot agree it to be moral for one’s neighbour to take one’s money by force and give it to the Ontario Arts Council. The Ontario Arts Council, in our view, should be funded on a strictly voluntary basis.

Now of course Ontario PC leader John Tory totally disagrees, but does fully support the premises of Arts Select 07, so I’m sure that that will translate into a lot of votes for him, except that of course the Liberal McGuinty government also supports arts through government funding. And so perhaps this is not really an election issue per se, especially since both parties are almost the same on so many issues.

It’s actually amazing if you think about it how hard John Tory has been working trying to redefine Ontario’s PCs as the splitting image of the Liberals and NDP. He’s totally distancing himself, for example, from Mike Harris and I couldn’t help but notice in an August 27 Toronto Star article by Chinta Puxley, John Tory is quoted thusly, “When did I use the word service reduction? Did I use those words this morning?” Tory said testily when asked about Harris’ cuts at a news conference highlighting the party’s plan to find 1.5 billion in efficiencies within the government. So Tory continued to distance himself from Harris, refusing even to utter his name, saying he would work cooperatively with the public service unions to save the province money.

He would work cooperatively with the public service unions to save the province money. Now, does that make sense to anybody?

The only way to do it is to give them $2 for every $4 you take back from the public.

And Tory says the government would also put more services online, including individual health records, which would save money and improve service. How do you feel about having your individual health record available online to improve service? This is the problem with not having the old family doctor structure where doctors kept your records and there was a way to get at them when needed. People are going into walk-in clinics in different locations all over the place and now their health care records are spread and scattered all around the province in various doctors’ offices.

So isn’t it interesting how both art and medicine seem to be operating on the same principles? And speaking of artists, there’s two ways to control artists. You can either completely prohibit their work or conscript them to do your work, or of course you can always pay them and fund them through the government, which is another way to influence the kind of art that they do. So that’s it for me on the arts funding thing.

Now, just we’ll leave you with a little smile on that issue as we come into a completely different kind of issue. And yes, I’m going to make the argument on the other side of this that Hitler was a socialist. I know a lot of you think, no, he’s a fascist. No, he was a socialist and you’ll hear the proof after this.

Clip (Yes, Prime Minister):

Jim Hacker (Prime Minister):

People can spend their own money on the arts. I don’t suppose government money should be spent on people’s pleasure.

Sir Humphrey Appleby:

Well, nobody could call it pleasure. The point is we have a great heritage to support. Pictures hardly anyone wants to see, music hardly anyone wants to hear, plays hardly anyone wants to watch.

Jim Hacker (Prime Minister):

You can’t let them die just because nobody’s interested.

Sir Humphrey Appleby:

Well, Prime Minister, it’s a bit like the Church of England. People don’t go to church, but they feel better because it’s there. The arts are just the same. As long as they’re going on, you can feel part of a civilized nation.

There are no votes for me in the arts. You said yourself nobody’s interested.

Sir Humphrey Appleby:

Well, nobody’s interested in the Social Science Research Council or the milk marketing board or the dumping at sea representation panel. But government still pays money to support them.

Jim Hacker (Prime Minister):

They do some good.

Sir Humphrey Appleby:

They don’t. Prime Minister, they don’t. They don’t do anything at all.

Jim Hacker (Prime Minister):

Well, let’s abolish them.

Sir Humphrey Appleby:

No, no, no. They are symbols. You don’t fund them for doing work. You fund them to show what you approve of. Most government expenditure is symbolic.

The arts council is a symbol.

Clip (Unknown Source):

Speaker 1:

No, that isn’t troop movement. It’s called the final solution. Those people are being taken to concentration camps. Most of them will die there.

Speaker 2:

Women and children? What could they have done to deserve that?

Speaker 1:

Nothing. Hitler used a campaign of hatred against the people called Jews as a means of explaining away all the problems of his country. It obviously wasn’t true. It was just a diabolical way of uniting all the dissidents in Germany. By the time they found out what Hitler really stood for, it was too late.

Speaker 2:

If this is what they do to people, maybe we ought to let Bavaria do his worst here in Germany.

Speaker 1:

No. Those men with the swastika arm bands are the kind of people he’d be bringing to power throughout the world.

Speaker 2:

Who is this Bavaria? Gestapo? Good luck to ya.

Speaker 1:

Look, lady, you’re making me very nervous with all this strange terminology.

Bob Metz:

Certainly most people do have a problem with terminology when it comes to politics and understanding the words we use almost in everyday language. Welcome back. I’m Bob Metz, and this is Just Right on CHRW 94.9 FM, where we’ll be with you for about another 15 minutes yet, running into the noon hour. And the reason I introduced this subject about Nazism and Hitler in Germany is basically because of an article that appeared in the National Post just this past August 18th by David Frum. By the way, just as an aside, coming out of our last subject, we just talked about art and culture. Hitler was very big into art and architecture, and he understood how vitally important these things were to both the culture and the symbolism and the philosophy of the Nazi regime.

And of course, he used it to his advantage in every case he could. But that wasn’t the particular focus of the article by David Frum. In fact, it was more based on a book review. And the name of the book is by author Götz Aly, and it’s called Hitler’s Beneficiaries, which Frum describes as a book written in a very dry and unsensational style.

The heading of the article reads, Evil and Avarice: Overwhelmed by Debt, The Nazis Turn to Robbery. And the book’s main message is that the Nazi regime was a popular one when it came in. There was very little resistance to Hitler at the time.

The secret of Nazi popularity was not the allegedly fanatical anti-Semitism of the German people. Rather, Hitler and the Nazis built a welfare state that delivered real benefits to German families. This welfare state was paid for by plundering first Germany’s Jews, and then the conquered nations of Europe. That’s how Hitler decided to pay for his socialism. Hitler often gets credit for pulling Germany out of the Depression. This claim is false. Germany in 1938 remained a poorer country than the Germany of 1928. Hitler launched a military buildup and created major social programs that Germany could not afford.

By 1939, the Nazis were spending something like 20.5 billion marks on the military, and 16.3 billion marks on civilian programs, all supported by only 17 billion marks in tax revenue. But protective of his popularity—Hitler was popular—he refused to tax ordinary Germans to pay for the bills. Throughout the Second World War, so-called democratic Britain accepted much higher tax rates than Hitler would ever dare impose on a totalitarian Germany. So instead, Hitler plunged Germany into debt equal to over 200% of national income by September 1939.

Overwhelmed by debt, the Nazis kept ruin at bay by confiscation and by robbery. In the fall of 1938, Hitler’s finance ministry panicked. They had 2 billion marks of short-term debt that was coming due, and they had no means to pay it. So the debt crisis prodded Hitler to launch the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938 where he demanded a billion mark atonement payment from Germany’s Jews.

Confiscated Jewish wealth averted a Nazi debt default. And of course the methods first used against the Jews would soon be deployed against all of Europe. But still people do not understand the nature of fascism and socialism, and if you really want to upset socialists, tell them Hitler was a socialist.

But let us refresh our memories. The National Socialist German Workers Party—Socialist is right in the name—founded in 1918, and was by 1932 the largest single party in Germany. It was considered the only people’s movement of all groups and classes in German political history.

The movement was financed by businessmen, landowners, bankers, and industrialists. And this is one of the reasons you will hear that Hitler was a capitalist, he believed in private property, he had businessmen supporting him.

There were many North American industrialists and leaders who also saw what Hitler was doing during the 30s as a tremendous organization of resources. But here’s an interesting comment from the encyclopedia. The long-term effects of Nazism on the German people were the complete annihilation of whatever liberalism had survived previous regimes of authoritarian persecution and the intensification of militaristic, nationalistic, and autocratic attitudes in German politics. And this demoralization of the German people, even after 12 years of Nazism, was expressed in their condemnation of the doctrine because it had failed rather than because it was mass murder. So basically this is pragmatism—oh, it didn’t work. Never mind all the rights you destroyed, all the lives you destroyed.

Now what people don’t realize, as even pointed out by Dr. Dorman, in 1883 Germany introduced the first socialized medicine system under Otto von Bismarck and Germany was well known for its socialized Medicare system. And in addition to socialized medicine, Germany instituted workers’ compensation, a government run and financed education system, old age pensions, an environmental movement—this actually has historical roots to the völkisch movement seen in the Green Movement today. They were totally in favor of affirmative action.

And sad to say, in many respects, the Canada of today is very much the Germany of the mid-1930s that we actually sent our troops to fight, minus the military buildup of course. Now, what drives this kind of thinking? Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were the ultimate altruists. Look at all those social programs that they brought in and people thought these were good things.

And it is for this reason alone that Hitler regarded the Aryan as the so-called Superman. Here’s something most of you do not know. To Hitler, the so-called superiority of the Aryan was not about intelligence and not about physical strength or about value or virtue. It was actually about the altruistic ethics that were displayed by the Aryan. Here it is in his own words quoted from Mein Kampf.

This self-sacrificing will to give one’s personal labor and if necessary one’s own life for others is most strongly developed in the Aryan. The Aryan is not the greatest in his mental qualities as such but in the extent of his willingness to put all his abilities in the service of the community. The basic attitude from which such fulfillment of duty arises, we call, to distinguish it from egoism and selfishness, idealism. By this we understand only the individual’s capacity to make sacrifices for the community and for his fellow men.

So in other words, Hitler thought the Aryan was superior because he was basically the lemming of humanity.

He’d be willing to sacrifice himself for anything the leader said. And that’s certainly not a superior quality in the broadest sense and it has nothing to do with color of skin, race, background or creed. It does have to do with the culture of the intellectual environment that you are raised in. The Nazis accepted the doctrine that the group is not only the proper beneficiary of man’s actions, but is also the creator of morality. The Nazi holds that ethical ideas like all others are devoid of objectivity and as a consequence there are no moral absolutes. Morality is flexible, adaptable and relative.

So much for Nazi ethics, go one layer deeper and we discover that the epistemology of the Nazis—the way that they think—is of course pragmatism and for pragmatism the true standard of truth is expediency. Whatever works goes. Never mind about the other person’s rights or freedoms or even the other person’s life. The greater good justifies the means.

The Nazi idealism declares there are no moral principles to protect the individual. We can sacrifice anyone we choose because we are acting in the name of the only fundamental moral principle, the welfare of the group. And of course the real question asked is who speaks for the group because that’s the guy who’s the real boss. If ever there was a collective philosophy, you ever notice in Star Trek the Borg, they have this collective mind but they always have to choose a leader to talk to people.

And folks that’s about all our time today. Just before I go, for those of you who might be interested, I will be appearing right now at noon on CTS, which is number 16 on Rogers Cable with Christine Williams and another guest named Anthony Hutchison on a discussion program called On the Line.

If you’re interested in that, you’ll hear us talking about single moms, kids, reality TV, and a $2.40 CRTC cable charge to soon provide a station for the blind. But that’s it for this week. Until then, be right, stay right, do right, act right and think right. Take care. See you then.

Clip (Stand-up Comedy Routine):

And my grandmother, God bless her, she called my grandfather one day—he was driving on the freeway. She called him on the car phone. She said, be very careful driving because I just heard on the news there’s a car driving right down the middle of the freeway going the wrong way. And my grandfather said, one car? I see hundreds of them.