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A Message of Hope, Love and Selfishness
This month on March 23 marks 16 years of President Obama’s nationalization of health insurance. When I read the legislation in the early years of the century, I knew what it meant: the beginning of accelerated rot and decay of the medical profession.
I knew, too, that the cost of medicine and so-called health care—dumbed down to the consolidated term healthcare—would escalate, contrary to Barack Obama‘s name for his illegal, immoral legislation, the Affordable Care Act. I knew the quality of medical care would rapidly decline.
I knew that the bureaucracy of health insurance cartels—in no sense was health insurance as an industry an example of capitalism (then as now the state-sponsored and favorited cartel was regulated and essentially controlled by the United States government)—would metastasize and spread.
I’m writing this not because my forecast was right, though it was right and I wrote extensively, repeatedly and passionately in opposition long before ObamaCare became law. I’m writing because now, as then, before Obama’s monstrosity was enacted, I am convinced that ObamaCare must, can and ought to be undone.
The assassination of one of the health pseudo-insurance cartel’s chiefs—Brian Thompson, the boss of United Healthcare, who unjustly was shot and killed in Manhattan by a leftist assassin—is a crucial indicator of America’s moral crisis caused by government control of “healthcare”. Crisis was forecast by Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff, who rightly lectured in the middle of the 1980s that medicine was dead as a profession—expressly, that all forms of government control of health care and medicine would collapse and cripple the U.S. economy and ruin lives.
Exacerbated by ObamaCare, it’s happening here and now. Whatever the advancements in medicine—as residual byproduct of what remains of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution—whatever proclamations of America’s best doctors—America has the best medicine in the world—today’s medical system is collapsing under its own injustice as millions of Americans struggle, despair and die from ObamaCare’s death sentences, denials, delays, distress and impoverishment caused by Obama’s redistribution of wealth and enslavement of medicine.
ObamaCare must be repealed in whole, not leaving its worst provisions intact as President Trump once proposed. The law must be repealed, decimated, destroyed. Only capitalism in medicine, pure capitalism, lets you live free and thrive.
Personal Note
I once shared a home and life with someone who sought to become a doctor. During that time, I observed firsthand the toll of government control on a man’s character. The experience prompted me to expedite my opposition to injustice and deviate from my career path with a five-year editorial leadership of a failed crusade for capitalism in medicine. My effort endured for 14 years in total.
I have strong views on what downed the campaign, which dwindled into an ivory tower where it was all but snuffed out by those who regard health policy as the province of the privileged few. It’s another tragic tale of altruism, including and especially among Objectivists who tend to be narrow-minded and rationalistic, with exceptions such as Leonard Peikoff and John David Lewis, both of whom carried on against ObamaCare and never let up. Dr. Peikoff, too, had a personal stake as the son and brother of “the forgotten man of socialized medicine,” the doctor, and as a man who began his life in earnest as a pre-medical student until he read and met Ayn Rand. Afflicted with esophageal cancer, the late Dr. Lewis was motivated as a matter of life and death. They are champions in the cause for free choice in medicine.
It’s still a noble cause. It remains my cause. Can the cause of capitalism in medicine, which begins with the abolition of ObamaCare’s enslavement, prompt you to think and fight to live free? If so, do what I did in 1993: focus on what you can do; whether writing a post or investing in a campaign. This means activism. Whatever you can do begins with an idea. I challenge you to mark your 2027 calendar (March 23) in advance for acts of progress. In the meantime, as Ayn Rand wrote: “Don’t let it go.” Gear up.
Related Posts and Episodes
Read the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare)
Ayn Rand’s fiction repeatedly portrays the story of individuals who leave their homeland seeking refuge from their oppressors
The post Ayn Rand’s Dramatization of the Migrant’s Journey to Freedom appeared first on New Ideal - Reason | Individualism | Capitalism.
Download video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/RwY9jxLY5hA
"It has become starkly obvious that the Maori seats are being used by activists to [ghettoise Māori: to isolate them, separate them, cut them off, according to a cultural identity]. ...
"Ghettoisation can be done to a person or group, or people or groups can do it to themselves. ...
"Israr Kasana, a Pakistani Muslim immigrant to the Canadian city of Calgary, explains why he and his family rejected the temptation to adopt the comfortable way of establishing themselves within a Pakistani community. He says 'Ghettoisation or marginalisation of any kind is bad for society. It creates exclusion, imbalance, envy, anger, ignorance and, more importantly, distrust.' ...
"The Maori seats encourage people to ghettoise themselves according to cultural identity, whereas what we must surely want is a society in which people of all races are able to coexist together in peace and cooperation as equal citizens under the law." ...
"[Then National leader Bill] English said [in 2003] the National Party 'stands for one standard of citizenship for all.' ... 'That’s why a National-led Government will abolish the Maori seats.” Of course, it did nothing of the sort when National came back into government in 2008 under John Key. Instead, the Key government abetted the infiltration of all parts of New Zealand society by elements who would substitute authoritarian tribal rule for a free and democratic society, a process which was accelerated by the Ardern/Hipkins governments. ...
"Under pressure from ACT and New Zealand First, the coalition government has walked this back a bit but not to the extent needed to offer meaningful restraint of the authoritarian tendencies which unthinking acquiescence by most of us has unwittingly allowed. ...
"Leadership is needed. We need a Prime Minister who will say loudly and clearly what English said in 2003 ... Today, when NZ First has advanced a Bill for a referendum and ACT says get rid of the Maori seats now, the opportunity is ripe for that sort of leadership.
"Getting rid of the seats, especially by or endorsed by referendum to show it is peoples’ will, would not only remove an anti-democratic excrescence, but also be a signal that enough is enough and that henceforth we shall be a 'multiracial society [where] people of all races are able to coexist together in peace and cooperation as equal citizens under the law.'
"Yet the National Party is silent. ..."~ Gary Judd, composite quote from his posts 'Ghettoising the mind' and 'National could signal its support for democracy'
"[T]he Māori seats were created to bring Māori into the parliamentary system and guarantee representation, rather than exclude them.
"By 1867, when the Māori Representation Act 1867(1) passed, Europeans outnumbered Māori roughly four to one. ...
"The Māori seats addressed a real problem: under the New Zealand Constitution Act 1852 [2] voting required individual property or household qualification. Most Māori land was communally held, leaving Māori largely unable to meet the franchise. ...
The Māori electorates solved the voting problem by granting all Māori men over 21 the right to vote, decades before universal male suffrage applied elsewhere in New Zealand [3]. Far from limiting Māori rights, the law expanded them. ..."The seats also guaranteed meaningful participation. Four electorates—three in the North Island, one for the South—were superimposed over existing electorates. Māori with qualifying property could still vote in European electorates, giving many a dual vote. [4] Officials went to extraordinary lengths to ensure participation: in 1890, a returning officer undertook a six-day trek through dense Urewera bush to establish a polling station at Maungapōhatu. [5] Such efforts are hardly consistent with a strategy to suppress Māori voices. ...
"Seats were originally intended as temporary until Māori qualified under the general property franchise [6] ...
"While Māori were under-represented by modern proportional standards [when the Māori seats were created in 1867, each European electorate represented roughly 3,500 people, while each Māori electorate represented around 12,500 people [7]], the four seats ensured guaranteed parliamentary representation, at a time when European immigration was rapidly outpacing Māori numbers. This was enfranchisement, not suppression.' ..."However today the original rationale for the Māori electorates has disappeared. In the current Parliament 33 MPs identify as having Māori heritage — about 27% of the House — far exceeding Māori’s roughly 17% share of the population. Even without the seven reserved seats, Māori representation would remain substantial, the historical purpose of the Māori electorates has now been fulfilled and, consistent with the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System and with Article 3 of the Treaty of Waitangi, they should now be abolished in favour of equal representation for all voters."NOTES1. New Zealand History, “Setting up the Māori seats,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats2. New Zealand Parliament, “History of the Electoral System,” https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/how-parliament-works/history/history-of-the-electoral-system/3. New Zealand History, “Setting up the Māori seats,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats
4. McRobie, Alan, Electoral Atlas of New Zealand, GP Books, 1989.
5. New Zealand History, “Polling in isolated Māori communities,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats
6. Ibid.; New Zealand History, “Setting up the Māori seats,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats7. Te Ara, “Māori representation,” https://teara.govt.nz/en/nga-mangai-maori-representation
Actors recoil at the thought of Tilly Norwood like Dracula seeing a clump of fresh garlic.
And it’s hard to blame them.
The A.I. “actress” hasn’t starred in a single feature-length film yet, but she represents a technology that, in theory, could make some stars obsolete.
The concept is unsettling for everyone, let alone the people who perform for a living.
Her very existence may never rise above a digital warning. And, chances are, she’ll be beaten to the punch by another A.I. performer who will seem all too familiar to fans.
Like Val Kilmer.
The “Top Gun” star died last April, but he is slated to “return” to theaters via the wonders of artificial intelligence, according to Variety. The actor landed the role of Father Fintan in “As Deep as the Grave” five years before his Dec. 2025 passing, but he was too sick to appear in the project.
He famously battled throat cancer in his final years, a condition that didn’t prevent him from appearing briefly in 2023’s “Top Gun: Maverick.”
Director Coerte Voorhees, with the approval of several members of Kilmer’s family, will use generative A.I. to insert the star’s likeness and voice. His character, a Native American spiritualist, will be seen at various stages of his life.
That’s no problem for A.I., which can use the endless array of images and video of the star to capture him at various ages.
This won’t be a glorified cameo, like the late Peter Cushing appearing in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” The role is considered a significant part of the film, a project co-starring Wes Studi, Tom Felton and Abigail Lawrie.
Speculation over this kind of digital stunt casting isn’t new. Modern stars must wonder how their likenesses might be used in projects after their passing.
That reality is here, but will it actually grace theaters? Could an uprising over the digital casting force the film’s creators to reconsider?
In 2019, a film production vowed to bring back James Dean via digital trickery. That project never came to pass. That was seven years ago, a lifetime in digital advancements.
The question remaining? Will Kilmer’s fans embrace the idea of a new film featuring the talented star, or will this become a cinematic pariah, to be avoided at all costs?
The post Forget Tilly Norwood … Here Comes A.I. Val Kilmer appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.
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