In a landmark 2000 study, historian David Beito carefully documented ways that the welfare state ate like a cancer at – and, hence destroyed many – private civil-society institutions of mutual aid. But some such institutions still exist. Civil society, fortunately, is robust – although not inextinguishable. As Reason’s Jim Epstein documents in this video, Obamacare threatens to destroy even more private civil-society organizations. In the process, this government overreach makes us not only poorer and less in control of our own individual and our families’ destinies, but it makes us also more infantilized and less civilized. It’s as tragic as it is regressive.
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