The Republicans, God help us, passed a bill adding prescription drug coverage to the already gigantically bloated Medicare system. At $350 billion, it is almost twice what it was in January, and those who remember the cost estimates for the original Medicare program will also remember that the actual costs ended up dwarfing original estimates. $350 billion will wind up being chump change compared to what the actual costs will be.

This was, of course, inevitable. No one is willing to stand up in politics any more, except some libertarians, and speak against the needs of one group giving them the right to loot another.

The elderly need prescription drugs, therefore they have the right to force others to pay for them. And this is not just along the lines of a "necessary evil," but this looting is actually considered a virtue in today's society, and those who object to the forced transfer of wealth are considered evil, heartless monsters. Hell, half the people on this board have probably arrived at this conclusion already, the basic principles I am trying to evoke having gone through their heads without making a mark.

"I need it. I don't have it. So I have the right to take it from someone who does." The moral foundation of liberal politics. The basis of a huge majority of the Federal Budget.* The moral code of the man who slugs you at midnight at the ATM machine.

Compassion = Government Spending (Looting). No alternative to this equation is even considered possible any more. A large number of liberals are not even capable of wrapping their minds around an alternative, looking at you like you are speaking Swahili if you try to point out what is going on.

Now that the redistribution of wealth is also a foundation of the Republican Party, which has been a long time coming, there is nowhere else to turn. Who is there to speak up for individual rights?

Once need is considered the only license for armed looting, where does it stop? Who decides whose needs are worthy of pouring out the Treasury, and whose aren't?

Of course, the immediate result will be skyrocketing drug costs. The market always works, and the same thing happened to medical expenses when Medicare was activated. Eventually, those of us who have to pay for our own insurance will find our private alternatives wrecked under the load, and we will all be forced to turn to the nationalized medicine programs that our beloved Lords in Washington will offer us.

And once we all have to rely on the government for medical care, then that's pretty much it. I'm sorry, but you can't ride that motorcycle. You can't eat that burger. You are property now.

I assume some jackass will pipe up with "Oh, you WANT old people to die?" Save it for the gasbrains in the media, who have become completely unable to deal with such concepts as facts and objective reality.

And those in Europe who will say how marvelous socialized medicine is, wait a few years until the wave of immigrants sucks your system dry.

Of course, what is really sad is that, as usual, when the Republicans go up on their knees to the Democrats and cut their own bellies open on the altar of socialism, the response is not praise from the Democrats and the media, but hatred and contempt because they didn't open their veins as well.

Now go ahead and smirk.

*Medicare and Medicaid, two functions not even dreamed of in the Constitution, currently account for about a fifth of the Federal Budget all by themselves. If we count Social Security old age and survivors benefits, this number expands to about 40 percent of the Federal Budget devoted to supporting the elderly voter. Again, nowhere was this considered in any way a function of the government by ANY of our Founding Fathers.

You know, considering Medicare and Medicaid did not even exist when I was a kid, one would have thought that I would remember countless deaths of the elderly without this absolutely essential program. I don't remember the gutters filled with corpses, the hospitals ejecting indigent old people, or my elderly relatives perishing for lack of medical care. We bought the Great Society hook, line and sinker. And now the hook is set good.