The Beasts of the Forest

On very rare occasions, one has a conversation that sticks in the mind for life. I had one a few years ago that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

I was talking to a French friend as we drove down a highway somewhere outside of Paris. It was winter, and that got us talking about the cold. That turned into talking about the heat. That reminded me of hot summer days in France, where few homes have air conditioning. Granted, air conditioning figures disproportionately in the consciousness of those of us from Arizona, but I still remember being quite uncomfortable on the rare, truly hot French summer day. And that memory led me to make a comment about the great European heat wave of 2003. I wasn’t there, of course, but if you remember, there was quite the public scandal when nearly 15,000 elderly French men and women died in their homes from heat exhaustion, stroke, and dehydration.

At that moment, my friend, who had until then always been a gregarious speaker, turned silent. I was worried that I had deeply offended him. It had been several years since I had had a real chance to speak French for an extended conversation, and I thought that in my enthusiasm I overstepped my bounds. I started to apologize, but my friend cut me off. Then, through a clenched jaw and with palpable bitterness, he said:

“The French abandon their old to live like beasts in the forest!”

He elaborated at some length, but the gist of his words had already been distilled in the first phrase, so I won’t retell it here. I thought of that conversation repeatedly in the following weeks, and it led me to reflect on a far older personal experience, one that I hadn’t given any thought to in several years.

Over two decades ago, I was a Mormon missionary in France. The land of post-Christian secularism is hardly the most fruitful place to proselytize, and if you are inclined to ask me why the French need missionaries, well, at least a hundred Frenchmen already beat you to the question. Not many people wanted to talk to us, and I remember spending a lot of time just knocking on doors and trying to be sociable; and in that, I saw a side of France that few others have ever seen, including no doubt most French people.

Many tourists have seen the famous side of France. Monuments and museums, tree lined streets, and cozy cafes, stylish women, and noisy little cars. Those that venture from the tourist corridors might see a bit of the rougher side of France, but those were hardly exceptional, as every city in every nation has similar neighborhoods.

But within those streets are hidden something else. In every neighborhood, there are long dark hallways of small apartments, each holding a single, frail old man or woman. I met and talked to them day after day. They were desperately lonely, and yet many of them had barely left their apartments in years. They were often terrified, and refused to open their doors. But sometimes they did. I have very specific memories of some of them. A delirious old man wearing no pants; A frightened old woman who asked if we would buy her groceries; Another who hadn’t had a hot meal in months and asked if I would fix her stove. Typically, they hadn’t heard from their family, including their own children, in years. Sometimes they told us stories. Some had fought in the First World War. One old woman told us of carrying messages in her shoes for the French Resistance in the Second World War.

These were people like you and me, and they had been abandoned.

Even today, I’m not willing to turn my experiences and observations into a larger condemnation of the French. In fact, my French friend’s judgment of his countrymen was much harsher than my own. The French have always been good to me. The problem, as I see it, is not that the French are heartless. Rather, it is that they, like all of us, tend to ignore whatever we are given the opportunity to ignore. And if they truly do ignore their old, it is only because the state promised that it would take care of them, back when it socialized medicine over sixty years ago.

Like everything else in life, socialized medicine offers a choice. We will sacrifice some things in order to gain others. The basic exchange is simple: we will give taxes, and gain security. However, implicit in this bargain are a number of additional, intangible costs. The first and foremost is a dramatic increase in the power of the state. Citizens simply cannot cede such a large segment of the economy to a government without losing some of their individual economic independence. The decline of economic freedom erodes every other kind of freedom, both because the new government authority expands, and because the door has already been opened to more and more intrusion into daily life. After all, every possible event or condition effects our health in one way or another, and therefore virtually anything is now under the purview of the state. Additionally, socialized medicine breeds resentment and contempt for others, because their health problems are now our taxes. Preventable health problems are no longer seen as private consequences of an individual’s free choices, but as a theft of your money. But there is more. It fosters a sense of dependency in citizens. It weakens the bonds of obligation within family and community. And finally, in the end, its unsustainable costs will bankrupt nations.

But enough of that, everyone knows those arguments, and most people seem to have already taken up sides. For those who support socialized medicine, there is one final argument that trumps all others: That argument is that socialized medicine is compassionate. It’s a powerful moral argument. After all, should we not care for the weak and sick among us? Arguments for socialized medicine are always framed in such terms. We must be compassionate, and therefore the state must care for the citizens.

However, that sentiment also has an inverse. If socialized medicine can on the one hand be seen as our using the resources of the state to show our caring for others, it can just as easily been seen as license not to care about others, because the state will do it for us.

After many years of observation, I am very much convinced that, among advocates of socialized healthcare, that latter sentiment is the far more widespread motivation. Some of the individuals I have listened to argue for it the most forcefully have been among the most angry, alienated, and resentful persons that I have ever known. In their contempt for others, they have not desired to care for others, but rather to be absolved of the need for caring.

“Socialized” anything is in fact a cruel oxymoron. It is distinctly anti-social as it actively discourages caring. Only weeks ago, a man I know who is an outspoken advocate of “social democracy” rejected out of hand the suggestion that he participate in a local charity program for migrant Chinese workers. “That should be the government’s job, not ours!” he said. That sentiment may not be universal among the citizens of the enlightened welfare states, but it is common, and much more common than it is among Americans. It is an uncomfortable truth for some people that Americans give much more time and money to private charity than do western Europeans. This is especially true of social conservatives, that same Neanderthal class that so adamantly opposes socialized medicine.

I am, for the record, not in any way a defender of the status quo of the U.S. medical system. I have been a critic for many years, and was so long before I gradually became a conservative by default. I'm not even opposed to government welfare programs, so long as they are carefully targeted in their purposes, and limited enough in scope that they don't foster permanent dependency. I want Americans to have good affordable health care, that they can choose and control for themselves. Free citizens don’t need "free" health care, they need free choices, and the dignity and self-respect that come with self-reliance. Compassion cannot be compelled. However, these are arguments that have been made eloquently by others elsewhere, and if you haven’t read them, I will fail in convincing you otherwise here.

I'll conclude with the story I began with. I recently retold it just as I did above to a person from a nation with socialized medicine. The response was that “no doubt the same thing went on in America”. Maybe. I doubt it though. I've never read anything anywhere that suggests a similar phenomena exists in the U.S., and until several thousand geriatric Americans die in a single heat wave, I’m going to remain skeptical. In any case, what consolation would that be? The entire promise of socialized medicine was supposed to be that things like that wouldn’t happen in the first place.

Socialized medicine promises that others will take care of us, while at the same time promising that we need not concern ourselves with others. These are incompatible promises, but they do offer each of us the comfort of ignorance…. an ignorance that, for many, may persist right up to the moment that all the promises fail, and they themselves join the beasts in the forest.

-- AzA