Eric Rasmusen’s Weblog

I rarely read Paul Krugman since he started writing so wildly a few years ago, but I saw his Schiavo column today and it exposes a common blindspot in liberals. He says:

There is a nationwide trend toward “conscience” or “refusal” legislation. Laws in Illinois and Mississippi already allow doctors and other health providers to deny virtually any procedure to any patient. Again, think of how such laws expose doctors to pressure and intimidation.

Without irony, he is saying that a law which allows doctors not to treat somebody exposes them to pressure. A law which required them to treat people on pain of fines and imprisonment, on the other hand, apparently would free them from pressure and intimidation.

The general fallacy that this illustrates is the idea that we have to fear oppression by other people, but never by government. If the government does it, it isn’t pressure and intimidation. By Professor Krugman’s logic, under Stalin, people had very little to fear from pressure and intimidation. Stalin made the government strong enough that nobody dared do such bad things.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 30th, 2005 at 9:37 am and is filed under Law, Thinking, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.