The 20th Century featured many examples of genocide, mass murder, brutality, and other forms of human horror at the hands of totalitarian governments. Perhaps none was worse — at least in terms of the proportion of the population slaughtered and resulting impact on the survivors — than Cambodia.

The commandant of the notorious S‑21, or Tuol Sleng, is currently on trial. The proceedings offer a stark reminder of what monstrosities cruel social engineers with guns can wreak. Reports Reuters:

A senior Khmer Rouge prison guard on Thursday told a war crimes tribunal he was forced to send thousands of detainees to an execution site, where they were brutally killed and their bodies thrown into mass graves.

Him Huy, 54, a guard at Phnom Penh’s notorious S‑21 prison, said he was ordered by Pol Pot’s chief jailor to transport prisoners to a rice field where they were stripped naked and beaten with clubs as they bled to death.

“All prisoners were blindfolded so they did not know where they were taken and their hands were tied up to prevent them from contesting us,” Huy told the joint United Nations-Cambodian tribunal.

“They were asked to sit on the edge of the pits and they were struck with stick on their necks,” he said, his voice breaking as he gave his harrowing account of the Choeung Ek executions.

“Their throats were slashed before we removed their handcuffs and clothes, and they were thrown into the pits.”

Huy was testifying against S‑21 chief Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, the first of the five indicted former Khmer Rouge cadres to face trial.

I’ve visited both Tuol Sleng and the so-called Killing Fields. The experience is incredibly depressing and moving.  These sites should be mandatory viewing for anyone tempted to surrender his or her liberty, even to the most supposedly well-meaning politicians, bureaucrats, and activists.

(H/​t to Paul Chesser, who has been blogging regularly on the trial.)

President Obama and other leading Democrats have proposed creating a new government health insurance program as an “option” for Americans under the age of 65. In a new study, Cato scholar Michael F. Cannon shows that government programs cost more and deliver lower-quality care than private insurance. “If Congress wants to make health care more efficient and increase competition in health insurance markets, there are far better options,” argues Cannon.

Fannie Med? Why a “Public Option” Is Hazardous to Your Health, Cato Policy Analysis No. 642

It’s not just Americans worried about the flood of dollars from the Fed. The Chinese and now the Malaysians also are wondering if they should keep dealing in greenbacks.

Reports the Wall Street Journal:

Malaysia’s prime minister said China and his country are considering conducting their trade in Chinese yuan and Malaysian ringgit, joining a growing number of nations thinking of phasing out the dollar.

“We can consider whether we can use local currencies to facilitate trade financing between our two countries,” Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak told reporters at a briefing Wednesday after meeting with China’s premier, Wen Jiabao.

“What worries us is that the [U.S.] deficit is being financed by printing more money,” Mr. Najib said. “That is what is happening. The Treasury in the United States is printing more notes.”

The dollar won’t easily be displaced as the world’s principal reserve currency. But Washington appears to be doing everything possible to hasten that day.

Perhaps Americans should consider keeping their wealth in yuan or even ringgits. At least they might retain their value even as the Fed and Treasury attempt to inflate and spend the U.S. economy into oblivion.

The Bush administration has many legacies. One is the more than $700 million U.S. embassy, set on 104 acres, only slightly smaller than the Vatican’s land holdings, in Baghdad. It was an embassy designed for an imperial power intent on ruling a puppet state.

It turns out that Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki doesn’t plan on being anyone’s puppet. U.S. troops have come out of the cities and will be coming home in coming months. Provincial reconstruction teams also will be leaving. The Bush administration’s plan for maintaining scores of bases for use in attacking Iran or other troublesome Middle Eastern states is stillborn. And Prime Minister Maliki isn’t likely to ask for Washington’s advice on what kind of society U.S. officials want him to create.

So just what should the Obama administration do with this White Elephant on the Euphrates? Cut it down, says the State Department’s own Inspector General.

Reports the Washington Post:

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad — the United States’ largest and most costly overseas diplomatic mission, with 1,873 employees — is overstaffed and must be reduced to a size more in keeping with the evolving U.S.-Iraq relationship and budget constraints, government auditors said in a report issued Wednesday.

divThe State Department’s inspector general said that although the U.S. presence in Iraq will become more civilian as the military withdraws over the next two years, the embassy “should be able to carry out all of its responsibilities with significantly fewer staff and in a much-reduced footprint.” The reduction “has to begin immediately,” the report said, before Foreign Service officers complete their next assignment bidding cycle and other employees are extended or hired.

The U.S. should be preparing to have a normal relationship with Iraq. That includes maintaining a normal embassy.

Europe has come into a lot of criticism lately. Much of it is justified. For instance, cutting military forces while expecting the U.S. to maintain security guarantees is more than little irritating for Americans facing trillions of dollars in deficits and tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities for various bail-outs and social programs.

However, predictions of a radical Islamic takeover of Europe look less realistic these days. Forecasting the future is always risky. Nevertheless, the feared growing population of Islamic extremists hasn’t appeared. Reports the Guardian:

A district of derelict warehouses, red-brick terraces, and vibrant street life on the canals near the centre of Brussels, Molenbeek was once known as Belgium’s “Little Manchester”. These days it is better known as “Little Morocco” since the population is overwhelmingly Muslim and of North African origin.

By day, the scene is one of children kicking balls on busy streets, of very fast, very small cars with very large sound systems. By night, the cafes and tea houses are no strangers to drug-dealers and mafia from the Maghreb.

For the politically active extreme right, and the anti-Islamic bloggers, Molenbeek is the nightmare shape of things to come: an incubator of tension and terrorism in Europe’s capital, part of a wave of “Islamisation” supposedly sweeping Europe, from the great North Sea cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam to Marseille and the Mediterranean.

The dire predictions of religious and identity-based mayhem reached their peak between 2004 and 2006, when bombs exploded in Madrid and London, a controversial film director was shot and stabbed to death in Amsterdam, and angry demonstrators marched against publication of satirical cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad.

For Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept, the continent’s future was to “tamely resign itself to a gradual transition to absolute sharia law”. By the end of the century, warned Bernard Lewis, the famous American historian of Islam, “Europe will be Islamic”. The Daily Telegraph asked: “Is France on the way to becoming an Islamic state?” The Daily Mail described the riots that shook the nation in the autumn of 2005 as a “Muslim intifada”.

Yet a few years on, though a steady drumbeat of apocalyptic forecasts continues, such fears are beginning to look misplaced. The warnings focus on three elements: the terrorist threat posed by radical Muslim European populations; a cultural “invasion” due to a failure of integration; and demographic “swamping” by Muslim communities with high fertility rates.

A new poll by Gallup, one of the most comprehensive to date, shows that the feared mass radicalisation of the EU’s 20-odd million Muslims has not taken place. Asked if violent attacks on civilians could be justified, 82% of French Muslims and 91% of German Muslims said no. The number who said violence could be used in a “noble cause” was broadly in line with the general population. Crucially, responses were not determined by religious practice — with no difference between devout worshippers and those for whom “religion [was] not important”.

“The numbers have been pretty steady over a number of years,” said Gallup’s Magali Rheault. “It is important to separate the mainstream views from the actions of the fringe groups, who often receive disproportionate attention. Mainstream Muslims do not appear to exhibit extremist behaviour.”

Obviously, the future is uncertain. Terrorism will remain a threat to both America and Europe. However, we must reduce the number of those hostile to the the U.S. and allied countries as well as stop those already determined to do us ill. So far, thankfully, the news from Europe in this regard appears to be good.

Uwe Reinhardt has made the argument that health care rationing is health care rationing. It’s inevitable, so there’s no big deal about the government exerting more control.  I argued earlier that this ignores the question 0f who is doing the rationing, us or the government? Since resources are finite but desires are infinite, we all engage in “rationing” in most every aspect of our lives. But we do so based on our needs, wants, wishes, and dreams, not those of politicians or bureaucrats.

Who makes the decision especially matters when the issue is life and death. There was a recent report on Red​State​.com that a Democratic congressional aide was overheard suggesting that expanded Hospice care would help solve the cost problem for health care: 

And, for the crowning glory, the aide feels that “probably the best part of the bill is the increase in Hospice care which will solve the prolonging of life issue.” 

One has to be careful dealing with second-hand reports of overheard conversations. Nevertheless, RedState’s Erick Erickson pointed to Oregon’s health program, which seems to trend the same way. As Fox News detailed:

Some terminally ill patients in Oregon who turned to their state for health care were denied treatment and offered doctor-assisted suicide instead, a proposal some experts have called a “chilling” corruption of medical ethics.

Since the spread of his prostate cancer, 53-year-old Randy Stroup of Dexter, Ore., has been in a fight for his life. Uninsured and unable to pay for expensive chemotherapy, he applied to Oregon’s state-run health plan for help.

Lane Individual Practice Association (LIPA), which administers the Oregon Health Plan in Lane County, responded to Stroup’s request with a letter saying the state would not cover Stroup’s pricey treatment, but would pay for the cost of physician-assisted suicide.

“It dropped my chin to the floor,” Stroup told FOX News. “[How could they] not pay for medication that would help my life, and yet offer to pay to end my life?”

The letter, which has been sent to other terminal patients throughout Oregon, follows guidelines established by the state legislature.

Oregon doesn’t cover life-prolonging treatment unless there is better than a 5 percent chance it will help the patients live for five more years — but it covers doctor-assisted suicide, defining it as a means of providing comfort, no different from hospice care or pain medication.

“It’s chilling when you think about it,” said Dr. William Toffler, a professor of family medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. “It absolutely conveys to the patient that continued living isn’t worthwhile.”

Where government picks up the tab, it obviously has to decide what services it is willing to cover. In the case of Oregon, the juxtaposition of refusing to pay for medical treatment while underwriting euthanasia should cause significant discomfort at the least. Of course, drawing the line will never be easy. But surely we don’t want government to decide where to draw the line for the rest of us who are not — presently, at least — dependent on Uncle Sam for their health care.

Which brings us back to the problem of rationing. We should not be able to count on someone else paying so we can receive every last medical treatment and procedure that is available, irrespective of how miniscule the likelihood of success. But we should be able to spend our money, either directly, on treatment, or indirectly, on a generous insurance policy, if that’s what we desire. Government’s responsibility is to help ensure access for those unable to help themselves, not make medical decisions for the rest of us, no matter how “rational” they might seem to someone else.

There may be nothing that more scares advocates of government-controlled health care than giving patients control over their medical treatment. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the current versions of health care “reform” would kill off Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).

Explains John Fund in the Wall Street Journal:

Eight million Americans, according to the Treasury Department, are covered by plans with low-cost premiums and high deductibles that are designed for large, unexpected medical costs. Money is also set aside in a savings account to cover the deductibles, and whatever isn’t spent in one year can build up tax-free. Nearly a third of new HSA users, according to Treasury figures, previously had no insurance or bought coverage on their own.

These policies will be severely limited. The Senate plan says a policy deemed “acceptable” must have insurance (rather than the individual) pay out at least 76% of the benefits. The House plan is pegged at 70%. That’s not the way these plans are set up to work. Roy Ramthun, who implemented the HSA regulations at the Treasury Department in 2003, says the regulations are crippling. “Companies tell me they could be forced to take products off the market,” he said in an interview.

This level of micro-management is a good argument in principle against the sort of “reform” currently being promoted on Capitol Hill. But the proposed rules likely were drafted in order to eliminate HSAs as an option. Explains Ryan Ellis of American Shareholders:

If an insurance plan must pay for 70 or 76 percent of all health care costs, it would be next to impossible for it to qualify as a high-deductible health plan. No HDHP, no HSA contribution.

The only hope a plan would have would be to do the following:

• Have a deductible no higher than the HDHP minimum ($1150 single, $2300 family in 2009)
• The out of pocket limit would have to be an identical amount
• The plan would have to cover all allowable preventive care on a first-dollar basis (annual physical, prenatal and well-child, immunizations, smoking cessation, weight loss programs, and early screening services)

Any HDHP which is this generous would have very little premium savings relative to a tradtional health insurance plan. If the typical HDHP today shaves about 33 percent off your premium, a plan like this might only shave off about 10 percent. There would be very little incentive to get an HSA-qualified insurance plan.

HSAs are an imperfect vehicle, an attempt to deal with the perverse incentives created by Washington’s favorable tax treatment of employer-provided health care. But the limitations inherent to HSAs should impel us to expand, not eliminate vehicles to enhance consumer choice. The more we find out about health care “reform,” the more obvious it is that patients would be the biggest losers.