Freedom Line Blog

Protectionism for volunteers? It’s an idea only the left could love. From John K. Ross, writing at Reason:

In the aftermath of the tornado that devastated Joplin in 2011, Remote Area Medical, a Tennessee-based charity that provides free health care, sent its mobile eyeglass laboratory to Missouri to help.

But it wasn’t allowed to assist because Missouri law makes it extremely difficult for doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals to offer free services.

“We did send the vehicle up there,” said RAM founder Stan Brock. “Unfortunately, it was not allowed to do anything because we did not have a Missouri-licensed optometrist and opticians available to do the work.”

Now, the kindhearted amongst you may have assumed (hoped?) as I did upon reading that passage that this was the product of some archaic law that no one knew existed until the situation arose (though even then one would have to question why they bothered enforcing it). Nope. Not only is this active policy, it’s one that the Show-Me State’s governor is intent on protecting:

In May, state legislators passed the Volunteer Health Services Act, which would have allowed health professionals licensed in other states to offer free care in Missouri and also would have relaxed medical malpractice liability for volunteer health workers.

Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed the bill last month, writing that the VHSA “is unnecessary given that Missouri already has a system in place that encourages volunteerism.”

There is political calculation and then there’s intellectual and moral perversion. Saying “Thanks, but we’d prefer you not help the most afflicted amongst us” falls decidedly into the latter category. It’s stories like this that remind us that “compassionate conservatism” is a tautology.

It is bad enough that President Obama has already been criticized by French President Nicolas Sarkozy for being insufficiently hawkish abroad (“weak, inexperienced, and badly briefed” was the New York Times’ memorable formulation of Sarko’s critique).

Now the president of the country that pioneered the 35-hour work week and eight weeks of annual vacation is giving Obama notes on the importance of economic freedom.

Asked about allegations that a contract for U.S. Air Force supply tankers was rigged to favor an American company, Sarkozy was characteristically direct:

“I did not appreciate this decision … This is not the right way to behave,” Sarkozy said.

“Such methods by the United States are not good for its European allies, and such methods are not good for the United States, a great, leading nation with which we are on close and friendly terms,” he said.

“If they want to be heard in the fight against protectionism, they should not set the example of protectionism.”

As I mention in my column this week, one of Obama’s biggest foreign policy mistakes has been undermining international trade while trying to rhetorically support it.

At this rate, France is going to be heroically saving the United States in World War III.