No, Mr. Strain. People dying is not OK.

The Far Right isn't even trying anymore.

A few weeks ago, Michael Strain of the extreme right-wing American Enterprise Institute penned an op-ed for the Washington Post arguing that it's perfectly dandy if people die if the Affordable Care Act is gutted. (I didn't find this piece until today. Maybe the Far Right realized they crossed a line and didn't want it getting any more play.)

The editorial is headlined, "End Obamacare, and people could die. That's okay." Strain argues that it's moral to abolish Obamacare and let people die. He says a "slightly higher mortality rate" is a good trade-off to preserve "individual liberty."

Seriously, he said that.

I would think that not dying would be one of the most important individual liberties of all. What ever happened to the sanctity of life? You can't claim to support life while cheering death in the name of "individual liberty", especially because the Affordable Care Act is far from being the worst affront to personal freedom out there.

We give up some freedoms to protect greater freedoms all the time. For example, we agree to pay taxes to preserve the liberty that comes with keeping our society functioning. Plus, while the country doesn't have the resources to place a paramedic on every corner to prevent every traffic death, it does have the resources for a national health care program that would save some lives.

The lunatic Right would be the first to have me strung up if I was physically threatened and I killed the assailant in self-defense. If the choice is either my life or that of someone who attacks me, would the Evil Empire be so keen on my right to defend myself? They bluster a lot publicly, but from what they've said privately, my rights mean nothing to them. To them, some lives are worth more than others.

The American Enterprise Institute wants to be a right-wing death panel. They want to decide that some must die in order to feed their perverted political goals. They would play God to serve their own ideology.