Ritual Sacrifice and socialised healthcare

This is a perfect example of the evils spawned by ideologies that view equality of material outcome not as a means to alleviate suffering but as an end in itself. If I am a patient in Britains Soviet style centralised health machine. I am not allowed to top up the cost of my state subsidised health care with my own money to pay for additional treatments which the bureaucracy has been unable to fund.

The Department of Health said: “Co-payments would risk creating a two-tier health service and be in direct contravention with the principles and values of the NHS.”

In other words the Great Socialist God Egalitarius demands blood sacrifice.

This is worse than the idiotic screwups, bureaucratic incompetence and a lack of imagination that are par for the course with all state run enterprises.

This is suffering by design. The system deliberately pursues a policy that causes more people suffer needless pain and suffering, fully aware of the consequences.

Preventable suffering and death that could be alleviated at no additional cost to the state are deliberately allowed to continue, in order to ensure equality of outcome. I wonder if the patients thus denied treatments are happy that their suffering is serving a higher purpose.

I think the principles and values of the NHS are rotten to the core.

Evil enshrined as a moral principle.

Occasionally I am give stark and brutal reminders that all social as opposed to individual morality is normative. Any practice no matter how vile, can and will be endorsed by the group; human sacrifice, genocide, slavery, torture, systematic rape, genital mutilation, footbinding. If the larger cultural framework endorses these things the majority of people will not only go along with these practices but approve of them.

The world's moral progress has been a long and slow crawl from the gutter. Just as she has been responsible the lions share of the work in our material advancement., so the West has been the chief architect of our painfully slow ascent up the moral ladder. Central to all moral progress is the liberation of the individual from the coercion of his peers.

I am a moral empiricist.

I believe that just as the motion of planetary bodies exists independently of the decrees of with doctors, shamans and Popes so the irreducible moral importance of the "I", the self-awareness that resides in every person, exceeds the reach of bureaucrats theologians, dictators and local cultural mores. Its importance is immutable.

Outside of the west, no culture places the individual's freedom of choice and personal happiness at the top of the hierarchy of values. No multi-culti-all-cultures-are-equal bullshit will make this any less true.

The moderately religious

A group of people I honestly don't understand are 'religious moderates' I fully realise that practically speaking religious moderation is preferable to religious fanaticism and that moderates pose far less of a threat to western civilisation than foaming at the mouth bearded, scimitar wavers. But I don't understand the religious moderates point of view. Mohammed, Jesus, Moses and all the rest make some pretty strong claims. I happen to think their claims are false so they and the tales of their exploits get filed on the ancient literature section of my bookshelf next to the stories of Zeus, Odin and Thor.

But if you think this stuff is true, it's pretty important stuff isn't it?
How the hell is it possible to believe that Moses WAS RIGHT when he slaughtered the Canaanites, Abraham WAS RIGHT when he offered to murder his son on the basis of his religious vision and then busily go about your life. If you believe this stuff not just true but the moral foundation of the entire universe shouldn't it color your behavior pretty dramatically? I just don't see how you can believe this stuff but take in your stride, go to church or the mosque every now and then but otherwise go about your way. If the claims in these books were actually true, it would be a pretty damn big deal.