With the Tories overtaking Labour to provide the main opposition in Scotland to the dominant Scottish National Party, disability activist Fiona Robertson has decided to embark on some swing voter outreach:
When I and my fellow disability activists woke up on the morning after the last General Election, we spent an unrelenting few days tag teaming as we tried to keep people in our community alive. We were not always successful. Over and over, hour after hour, we saw iterations of the same message: “I do not think I will survive this government.”
The day of the election, we had all taken a few moments to remember the people who were not there to vote because of the actions of the coalition government. We took a moment to think of the people who would not make it to the next election if we lost.
Amid the elation so many in Scotland felt at the sweep of SNP seats, we disabled people also felt utterly betrayed and hopeless, because the population of the UK had voted to enforce extreme, frequently lethal, damage to our health.
If you do it again, if you do this to us again, we will never forgive you. You can’t pretend you don’t know, you can’t pretend that other things are more important, that it’s not the killing of disabled people you’re voting for really; it’s the other stuff.
For the purposes of argument let’s assume that what she says is true (Yes, I know. It’s a rather extreme. But in the interest of fairness and all that!)
It then follows that she and her fellow progressives are to be held personally responsible for every assault, robbery, fraud, abuse, sexual abuse, rape, and murder committed by illegal immigrants or particular immigrants who are known to have a violent past and have been assisted by them. They’re also responsible for every dead African killed by black smoke cooking fires and every old person who freezes to death because of their environmental lunacy. They’re responsible for every ill person who dies because the NHS is swamped by free-loaders, and the victim of every violent crime caused by a known criminal kept out of prison (or let out early) due to progressives ‘well-meaning’ interference in the courts and prison system.
the population of the UK had voted to enforce extreme, frequently lethal, damage to our health.
Can’t help but wonder (considering I did vote for the party that won) whether I missed something important in the manifesto of the Conservative party. Was their a somehow-unnoticed by journalists section on eugenics? A decision to limit access to the NHS for people with congenital conditions? Just an announcement that health spending was to be cut?
Ah – then I look at the full argument, and it appears she’s complaining that the government’s failed attempt to spend less of our money on other people is resulting in some people losing money they previously had, with the figures in the links she provides (those that aren’t demonstratably false – the number of extra deaths is a known abuse of statistics) suggesting that in most cases this is justified (in that the figures for successful appeals against decisions are a lot smaller than the total number).
So once more my desire to become an evil supervillain is thwarted by the unfortunate effects of realtiy – my action was not a decision to hurt others, but to simply stop paying people unnecessary money. Still, if you are a disability rights actitivist this is going to be upsetting – how are you going to attract funding for your cause if the funding is only for those who need it for dealing with their disability?
There is a ban on charity? Gee, whooda thunkit? or perhaps charities vet people a little more closely than the government does, giving aid to people who actually require it. This is the usual leftist “If the government doesn’t pay for everything will all die” rhetoric. ‘Desperate nonsense.
As she is an SNP supporter, I am totally ok with that 😈
It never seems to occur to these people that not everyone who disagrees with them is a anarchist. Even some libertarians might think that certain government functions are important, and that they shouldn’t be imperilled by spending limited resources on things that don’t fall into that category. Some sort of anger ought to be reserved for those who expanded the role of the state to unaffordable levels in the first place.
You can see the same attitude in the bleating about libraries. Generally local councils have made the decision to close them in response to an overall cut in budget, in preference to cutting other things. But statist ire is never directed against the councils themselves, even where they’ve chosen to maintain completely pointless departments rather than services that people might actually want.
“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” I don’t agree with some of Sowell’s social opinions, but he was absolutely on the money there.
Since Ms. Robertson’s livelihood depends entirely upon arousing fears, hyperbolic ranting such as this is only to be expected. Still, she does make one good point: “This is not just a vote on Brexit, it is a vote on their entire manifesto and a judgement on their policies on everything from crime to social care to housing to international relations.” I certainly hope so, because by necessary implication it is thus also a referendum on her entire manifesto and a judgment on her policies. All of which deserve to be roundly rejected.
Another quote of Thomas Sowell’s is appropriate here, especially in relation to state funding of welfare.
Thus if we are spending money either excessively or unnecessarily on disability support for people who are either not sufficiently disabled to get a job or just out-and-out faking it then that money is being redirected from the deserving to the undeserving.
I would expect that a genuine disability campaigner (rather than a rent-seeker like Fiona Robertson) would be happy to have the workshy, feckless and the fakers removed from the disability as those who remain would only be the deserving.
I have absolutely no issue with provision of welfare to the genuinely disabled.
Sounds to me that, although they’ll never admit it (a bravado that would make Monty Python’s Black Night look like a quitter forming the basis of their entire strategy), if they’re accusing their opponents of murder, the seperatists must be getting rather worried.
Mind you, I always wonder whether this kind of hyperbole really sways anyone, or if it’s just pre-emptive ranting; a sort of warning that if you vote the wrong way, you will be the subject of the sort of naked hatred we’ve seen most recently directed at Trump supporters. More of a threat than an argument, in other words. “[W]e will never forgive you. You can’t pretend you don’t know …” sure sounds like one to me.
Anyway, I saw on Guido that the Nats’ “line” the other day was, “A Tory win will feel like a UKIP government in Scotland”. So is there any downside at all?
In the same way that capitalists often defend corporatism when it’s attacked as an argument for socialism, statists will defend waste and dishonesty in government programmes. Logically both ought to want their preferred systems to run smoothly, but both have a tendency to ignore valid criticism because of the person making it.
I laughed derisively. Does this make me a bad person?
[Battery Sargeant Major Williams] Oh Dear, What a Pity, Never Mind [/Battery Sargeant Major Williams]
Yes Rob and you’re going to non-denominational Puritan hell for your sins. Don’t worry though, we’ll all be there with you, laughing at this moronic idiot ranting over her nonsensical bullshit.
‘Koba, do you know what gratitude is?’
Stalin sucked on his pipe and thought a moment. ‘Yes, I know it very well. It is a sickness suffered by dogs’.
This is what comes out of the socialist/welfarist mindset.
If you can phrase your argument this way, your followers no longer have to view their opposition as people with differing ideas – they’re free to see them as inhuman child-killers whose ideas and utterances can be ignored and dismissed.
She’s simply following the most recent SJW tactics. If you can position your opponents as being beyond the Pale – utterly unredeemable, amoral brutes – you can skip the entire conversation defending your own point of view and move directly to enacting it.
The mind boggles to read this drivel. Killing disabled people? Really?
“And yet she’s still alive. Moriarity, more coal in the water!!”
Conversely, more from Comrade Stalin: “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”
This is a small taste of the propaganda that would come if ever there were REAL cuts in the Welfare State (government spending is presently NOT being cut).
“You are killing the poor, the old, the disabled – you are MURDERERS!”
That is what would be said – and not just by “activists”.
This is why rolling back the state is so unlikely – politicians who vote for real cuts would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.
And the Civil Society cultural institutions (both religious and secular, fraternal, – and the family itself) have horribly declined – undermined by the Welfare State. The UNSUSTAINABLE Welfare State.
Solution? I have no solution.
We are bleeped.
Western Civilisation is bleeped.
Churchill: “A fanatic is someone who can’t change their mind and won’t change the subject.”
Fiona Robertson’s sign-off line in the OP-linked article: “Do not let them change the conversation.”
Imagine being a disabled person unable to walk away from her in a meeting; one might wonder, ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ 🙂
But Paul there is a solution and it is already moving its way through the veins of the welfare state. The corruption which you so accurately describe will kill the welfare state as its inherent insupportability will be its downfall.
We may both live to see the collapse of the welfare state in the penury of our old age and while we may caution against repeating the mistakes once more, the greatest errors are long in the making and hard in the fall.
For it is the doom of men…that they forget.
Dunno. My immediate response to the headline was
“Don’t forget to shut the lid on your coffin before you head off to the crematorium.”
Am I being insensitive?
Since I was twenty-two, every economist has been promising me that our Social Security system will completely and utterly fail exactly three days before I retire, no matter when that might be.
So I’m guessing you can plan on seeing the collapse.
I notice from her photo that she’s a well fed heifer. With blue hair.
And yes, appearances are very revealing of character.
Anyway, her whole article is the bleating of the defective calf begging for help from the herd because the calf sees the lion in the tall grass.
Most of us are starting to realize that subsidizing defective calves just gets us more defective calves.
John Galt, “Deserving”? “Undeserving”?
As Peter Schwartz so aptly pointed out in his In Defense of Selfishness, the Left have redefined Need as meaning you have something, they don’t, they want it, therefore they “need” it. People need “free health care”. They have a “right” to it because they “need” it…apparently.
On a personal note, when one sees the horror in the faces of the Colletivists, especially the Leftists when I explain to them that, in my opinion, it harms other people when one’s thoughts and actions encourages the idea that they’re entitled to something they haven’t earned, (like tipping waitstaff a set percentage of the bill, regardless of the quality of lack of quality of service), and I have no intention of harming other people, it becomes clear why the left so vilify and lie about Ayn Rand. In other words, because I care about the concept of justice, that makes me evil.
BTW, no one “deserves” money from the government that was expropriated from others by G-men with guns and cages.
Fred said
Yes indeed, you get more of what you subsidize. Subsidize poverty, we get more poverty. Subsidize single mothers in broken impoverished families, and get more of the same. It’s an age old problem. Which is why throwing money at problems don’t make them go away, much like one can’t put out fires by throwing gasoline at it.
Charlie Suet wrote,
Charlie, capitalists DON’T defend corporatism. Those who defend corporatism aren’t capitalists.
(Don’t worry, this isn’t a ‘Scotsman fallacy).
Capitalism means free enterprise, “free” from gov influence and vice versa. Trying to criticize capitalism by pointing out negative points of cronyism or corporatism is like trying to criticize free speech by pointing out the negatives in complete totalitarianism.
When you attack corporatism, you’re making the capitalist’s argument for him (or her).
John Galt wrote, “We may both live to see the collapse of the welfare state”
That’s funny. Altruism is the sacrifice of the able to the unable, the sacrifice of the willing to the unwilling. To collectivists, the utter failure of the welfare state is evidence that we “need” much more of exactly the same.
Wait, y’all have a political party with killing the disabled on its platform? That’s fucking metal.