My bet is that, in this long twilight struggle brought into focus by 9/11, the hard cultures will survive and the soft cultures won't. And, because I'd like my country to make it, I tend to look at every issue these days on whether it falls on the "hard" or "soft" side of the ledger. For example, Roy Romanow justifies the state's monopoly on health care on the grounds that "Canadians view Medicare as a moral enterprise, not a business venture." Well, if they do, they're very mistaken. Medicare isn't a moral enterprise: what's moral about removing a citizen's responsibility for his and his dependents' health care and entrusting it to the state? If free citizens of advanced, wealthy economies are not prepared to make provision for their own health care, what other basic responsibilities are they likely to forego? Socialized health care redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state. Even if it worked -- even if it wasn't a decrepit, SARS-spreading sinkhole -- it would still be bad in its softening effect on the citizenry.

When health care is the government’s responsibility, it becomes its principal responsibility. Imagine if we had as many high-profile conferences on national security as we do on health. But we don’t. Because the minute you make government the provider of health care, you ensure that, come election time, the electorate identifies health as its number one concern. Thus, in a democracy, the very fact of socialized health care seduces government away from its prime responsibility – the defence of the realm. In the Canadian cabinet, the Health portfolio is more prestigious than Defence. Think Donald Rumsfeld would regard it as a promotion if he were moved to Health?