Justice Ginsburg Treated for Cancer at Center Partly Funded by David Koch's $225 Million in Gifts
One of the most absurd things about rabid leftists is that they savage capitalism while taking as much advantage as possible of the quasi-utopia capitalism has created.
They decry pollution yet use electricity, by-products of which are usually either airborne pollution or radioactive waste.
They hate the internal combustion engine but love the niche selections delivered to Whole Foods by an army of 18-wheelers throughout the week.
They trash the idea of profits while enjoying the air conditioning, smartphones, high-speed internet, inexpensive food and clean air (yep, clean air) that the profit-driven model of free-market capitalism produces.
They are wholly dependent on the things they condemn — of course, no news there. But what’s really fun is watching for new ways that they contradict themselves. Enter Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
RBG, as the hip kids call her, is a spry 86-and-a-half years young. She works out, is intellectually sharp and seems to still have her keen wit. She and Justice Scalia, believe it or not, were great friends.
She is, unquestionably, the greatest living female hero leftists have, having taken the title from Hillary Clinton when the erstwhile presidential candidate lost it due to apparent instability brought on by losing an election to Donald J. Trump.
RBG is also the most closely watched of the justices among conservatives and liberals alike due to her age and the fact that a conservative replacement would almost certainly enable the Court to right the travesty that is Roe v. Wade.
RBG is both vaunted by, and vital to, the American left.
Now Ginsburg, we learned last week, has undergone treatment for a recurrence of pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is normally fatal, but the justice has already beaten it once before. Now the left depends on her beating it again.
Ginsburg has sought treatment at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center — and that is significant, because when David Koch battled prostate cancer in the 1990s, he fought it there.
According to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center website, Koch donated $225 million to the center from 1990-2015. His 2015 donation was $150 million, and it was the center’s largest donation ever, and it decided to build the David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care, which is completing construction this year.
So why does this matter? It doesn’t, except that this is a fantastic example of the quandary the left consistently finds itself in.
Leftists depend on the First Amendment, which they hate, to protect their speech. They depend on the military, which they hate, to protect their freedom. They depend on the police, whom they attack, to ensure their safety. They hate big business because of big profits, but they depend on those profits to fund the non-profits they adore — non-profits like hospitals. Like the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Leftists refuse to understand that it’s money from people like David Koch that keep places like Sloan Kettering running. It’s that money that allows the poor and rich alike to receive treatment at first-class hospitals. It’s that money that keeps ungrateful universities open. It’s that money that is helping treat their heroine, Justice Ginsburg.
And, unlike the false narratives spun by the left, those profits come not from coercion but from voluntary deals, like those made with the Koch companies. Nobody makes people buy Georgia-Pacific paper, Flint Hills ethanol (well, the government sort of makes people buy that), Guardian glass, Invista spandex, Molex robotic surgery components, Koch fertilizer or Matador cattle.
People buy those products on their own, and they do so gladly, choosing them over competitors for any number of reasons. The Kochs didn’t force consumers to buy their products. Consumers came to them and asked to buy.
And with the money they made, the Kochs have been able to fund hundreds of millions in charitable contributions.
The fact that David Koch’s contributions have helped save people like Ruth Bader Ginsburg is truly wonderful. It’s an example of the kind of benefit that free-market capitalism and conservative culture can bring to literally billions of people.
Sadly, it also shows just how little the left understands the way the world works. Those on the left are certain that standing against the rich is the way to greater prosperity and longer life.
The only problem is that without capitalism, you don’t get greater prosperity or longer life. You get the streets and hospital beds of Venezuela — or Cuba, or China, or North Korea, or the Soviet Union.
If the left would simply understand that, a lot more lives than just Justice Ginsburg’s could be saved.
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