Bob Hayes Online

No, no, no, no, a thousand times, NO.

If my fellow citizens want to burden themselves with some horrific tax-and-spend nightmare of socialized medicine, they may. I’ll oppose it, but there’s a right to make stupid choices.

But I will not be coerced into buying an insurance product, whether public or private, to satisfy some bureaucrat’s desire that my spending choices reflect the ones s/he thinks I should make.

Hell, no.

If this atrocity becomes law, I will stand on the steps of the US Capitol and demand to be arrested for my crime of refusing to pay. We are not children subject to the whims of a babysitter, however benevolent. We are free Americans. I will choose the course of my own life, and I do not yield that power to any man or any state.

They can have my taxes but they cannot have my conscience or my choices. Those are mine, now and forever.

End of discussion.

A businessman finally dissents. Amen, Mr. Asness.

Obama thinks this is going to cow the business population so that they will go along with his socialist agenda. He’s probably right; business leaders have been pretty spineless through all this.

Yet, the business population and the investor population aren’t identical. Investors aren’t cowed, they’re scared shitless – presumably Obama isn’t going to gut everybody’s shareholder value, but where will the messiah’s finger next point? I’d say you’d have to be nuts to have money in health care, real estate, or transportation stocks these days. In any sector Obama thinks could do with some updating, shareholders are going to be running for the hills.

Ever get sick of the long anti-materialist “you Americans with your SUVs and your big-screen TVs” rants so popular among the hard economic left?

Him too.

Full of awesome. Go, read.

Are Marxists vanishing from the academy? Or just abandoning a label? Megan McArdle at Assymetrical Information starts off a vigorous discussion.

(Hat tip: Evangelical Outpost.)