Freedom? Choice? High-minded claptrap. The government knows what’s best for you, and the courts agree:

All or nothing.

At least that is what a federal judge says about government entitlements. Judge Rosemary Collyer recently ruled that Social Security recipients must take the government’s form of health care—Medicare.

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This recent ruling is the result of a lawsuit filed in 2008 by several senior citizens challenging the federal government to allow them to keep their Social Security benefits but allowing them to opt out of Medicare. The Wall Street Journal comments, “The idea of patient choice offends many in government, and in 1993 the Clinton Administration promulgated so-called POMS rules that say seniors who withdraw from Medicare Part A (which covers hospital and outpatient services) must forfeit their Social Security benefits.”

Each of the plaintiffs involved in the lawsuit paid into Social Security and Medicare throughout their working lives, but they didn’t want to enroll in Medicare because they had their own health insurance programs, but they did want to receive their Social Security benefits.

In an article written by Kent Masterson Brown, the plaintiffs’ chief attorney, he states, “Thanks to Collyer’s ruling the plaintiffs are now forced into Medicare and will have to give up their private health plans and health savings accounts. (The ruling still allows private ‘MediGap’ coverage to supplement Medicare.) Indeed, all seniors now must enroll in Medicare, Part A, whether they want it or not. If they don’t, their Social Security retirement benefits will be taken from them.”

This entitlement just became a mandate, even though government-run programs such as Medicare are largely responsible for America’s growing debt.

If it can be ruled that a so-called voluntary program can be forced upon a class of people, where does that leave other supposed entitlement programs?

Where? In government housing, riding high speed trains to our government jobs, is my guess.

But don’t worry. Individual liberty is overrated and inherently messy, anyway — and besides, who wants to follow a plan set out by dead white European males? Did the stupid patriarchy spell out the right to collectively bargain, or the right to high speed internet access for all?

No. So fuck them right in their tri-corned hates. It’s 2011. Like, over a hundred years after these slave owners scribbled on a parchment. We have computers now. And Twitter. Time to fix shit. You know, for freedom.