OPINION:
Former congressman and nationally syndicated radio host Joe Walsh took on comedian Jimmy Kimmel, asking in a brief and blunt tweet — why do American taxpayers have to be obligated for the health care expenses of an individual, anyway?
Terrific question. And this is why Twitter is great. In just a few short words, one can completely smash socialism and socialists.
“Sorry Jimmy Kimmel: your sad story doesn’t obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else’s health care,” Walsh tweeted.
He also later tweeted: “It’s not compassion to forcibly take the money I make & give it to someone else. It is compassion for me to voluntarily help someone else.”
And one more, a great insight into why the brouhaha over Kimmel right now: “The Left is all about emotion. What ’feels good.’ The Right tries to use reason & thought. The Left is winning. Where America is today,” Walsh tweeted.
Bam. Exactly.
Kimmel’s emotional tale of how emergency medical services saved his newborn son and fixed his heart defect has been widely used by the left in recent hours to score big political points. Why? Because Kimmel didn’t just stop with the personal tale; he summarized that his emergency room experience was just why the nation needed Obamacare.
“If your baby is going to die, and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make,” Kimmel said, during his widely watched 13-minute monologue. “I think that’s something that, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or something else, we all agree on that, right? … This isn’t football. There are no teams. We are the team — it’s the United States. Don’t let their partisan squabbles divide us on something every decent person wants.”
Even Barack Obama took notice.
“Well said, Jimmy. That’s exactly why we fought so hard for the ACA, and why we need to protect it for kids like [your] Billy. And congratulations!” the former president tweeted.
But Kimmel’s a bit deceitful with his posturing. He took his family’s emergency room experience and expanded it to the debate about ongoing coverage from insurers, as a means of making the point that Obamacare — and only Obamacare — would sufficiently provide for kids with pre-existing heart problems. In other words, he was conflating two different health issues — emergency care and ongoing service.
Here’s the capital “F” Fact, though: Any kid in America born with a heart defect would’ve received the same life-saving emergency care services as Kimmel’s son. Kimmel’s line of thought was faulty — and unnecessarily political.
And Walsh rightly called him to the mat on it.
Social media users, of course, were quick to pounce and turn attack dog on Walsh.
“@WalshFreedom thank you for having the courage to fight against those conniving evil takers, sick children,” tweeted one guy, John Brougher.
Emotion over logic — case in point. This is what the left uses; this is what the right fights. And sadly, as Walsh noted, the left is scoring more points with irrational heart-pulls than the right is with factual evidence — and that’s why America is on this slippery slope toward socialism, away from rule of law.
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