An Editors Note
Coming from an Objectivist perspective, some may wonder how people such as those in the current administration can possibly believe in the programs they advocate. From the budget acts to the health care proposals, their plans seem rife with contradictions to the most fundamental principles of economics. Republicans and Libertarians provide much anecdotal, and even some good theoretical, evidence why socialized medicine and socialism in general are historically and theoretically abysmal failures.
What individuals may not realize is the degree to which the acceptance of the moral/practical dichotomy is at work in the present culture ... and is affecting these conflicts.
So long as the Republicans (and Libertarians) who are against socialism argue ``practicality'' while ignoring ethics, they continue, and must continue, to fail. Given the choice of morality or practicality, people will choose, all cynicism aside, what they believe is moral. If their philosophic mechanism is not up to the task of identifying the logical fallacies throughout the notion of pitting the moral against the practical, if their faculty of reason is so corrupted (or simply undeveloped), then they will place greater importance on their ``moral sense'', i.e. their emotions, than their reason.
For this reason, as long as the opponents of socialism refuse to enter the realm of morality, conceding that, for example, socialized medicine is a moral ideal, but simply leads to an ineffective medical system in practice, they will continue to lose to those who will accept any compromise in ``practical'' issues to uphold their moral beliefs.
Anyone interested in fighting the present political trend toward socialism should remember that the fight is not primarily over economic theories. The altruist/collectivists will accept, in the name of their morality, a degraded medical system, they'll accept that all the decent doctors may quit, the hospitals may close, the medical suppliers may go out of business, and the only treatment left for any illness may be two aspirin; so long as the poorest wretch in the world can have the same two aspirin as anyone else.
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ON THIS NOTE: It should be obvious why the religion-flaunting conservatives of the ``New Right'' are the least effective in the fight. They don't refrain from entering the battle on moral grounds - they enter it, but on the side of the liberals! They claim their God requires that the individual must be left free for morality to have any meaning, while the liberals remind them that the lilies of the field shall not toil, that money is the root of all evil, and the meek shall inherit the Earth.