FOX NEWS, 3/26/2009 (Hat tip: Jean Nelson) - Sean Hannity interviews Mr. Daniel Hannan, member of the European Parliament [Excerpt]:
- HANNITY: And as you point out, you can't spend your way out of recession, borrow your way out of debt. Do you think the world is making a mistake and that we're really all collectively going to suffer these consequences?
HANNAN: We're all collectively going to suffer the consequences. I mean it's not our mistake. The mistake is being made by a small number of political leaders and the small number of their advisers. You know it's a common sense that when you're in debt, you spend less. Now anybody except a politician can see that. Anyone can see that in their private life.
Full Transcript: March 26, 2009
HANNITY: Mr. Daniel Hannan joins us tonight from London.
Mr. Hannan, thank you for being with us. Do you realize how your message is resonating loudly and clearly in American tonight and how inspired people are by your words?
HANNAN: And you say the nicest things. Listen, I'm happy to come on this show anytime you want me. I'm pretty perplexed by the whole thing. I'm trying to think of, if you could come up with the most boring phrase to enter into a Google search engine, and I thought, speech to the European parliament, so I am completely bowled over by what you said.
HANNITY: Yes, well — look, go over every line. We now are adding, by the year 2019, we're going to have nearly $900 billions just on interest on the debt with what Obama is spending. He's spending more than every president from George Washington to George W. Bush in terms of the debt he's accumulated here.
And as you point out, you can't spend your way out of recession, borrow your way out of debt. Do you think the world is making a mistake and that we're really all collectively going to suffer these consequences?
HANNAN: We're all collectively going to suffer the consequences. I mean it's not our mistake. The mistake is being made by a small number of political leaders and the small number of their advisers. You know it's a common sense that when you're in debt, you spend less. Now anybody except a politician can see that. Anyone can see that in their private life.
You've run up too big a debt, you've run up too big a mortgage which you try and sort it out, because if you're either a banker or a politician, you have a different take on these things. Because, of course, it isn't your money.
You know, that great phrase of Milton Friedman. There's only two kinds of money in this world, it's your money and it's my money, in a way. We're very careful about the second of those. But of course, for politicians, it's all your money.
HANNITY: Yes. Anybody but a politician can see that. I think that's going to go down as one of the all-time classics. Unfortunately, it's true. You know, one of the things, Mr. Hannan, that we're debating in America, Barack Obama wants to lay down $634 billions for nationalized health care.
Well, we've had nationalized health care in Great Britain, and we've had it in France, and we've had a single payer in Canada. My question to you is, based on what you said, I would like you to explain to the American people if this is a good idea through this prism.
I read in The Daily Mail last week that the — the your health system, the NHS, literally has a group of people that decided, government bureaucrats, that they were going to give drugs to women with breast cancer and a certain rare form of stomach cancer. The rationing body is what they call it.
Is it a good idea for the U.S. to invest in nationalized health care?
HANNAN: Now, first of all, it's important that you understand that that's a true story, and it's a typical story. It's not in the newspapers because it's unusual. We have a rationing body that's called, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence. It's known as NICE, N-I-C-E, which, coincidentally, there was an adult novel by C.S. Lewis in the 1940s where the NICE was this kind of Satanic conspiracy.
And in terms of them, align affects, you can sort of see the connection. I mean it's a terrible thing to put anyone in this situation, any bureaucrat in this situation, of having to make those life and death decisions because they are literally life and death decisions.
HANNITY: So you...
HANNAN: The worse thing is for you as the recipient of health care because you've got no control over what you get. There's no contractual relationship between you and the suppliers, so, you know, if they treat you today or next week or six weeks from now, where it's too late because your condition has already deteriorated.
HANNITY: So your advice.
HANNAN: ... there's nothing you can do about it. You are expected to queue up with a smile and be grateful for what you have. And it is — it's the last survivor of the kind of socialist post-war conspiracy. Sorry, socialist post war –- yes, I'm tired. It's midnight. Socialist post-war consensus...
HANNITY: All right, let me ask you.
HANNAN: ... in the U.K.
HANNITY: So your advice to America is to stay away from socialized health care. I think you're very clear on that. Let me ask you what.
HANNAN: If you — listen, if you get nothing else from what I'm saying this evening, please do not make that mistake. If there are any congressman watching this who think, yes, it might be a bit fair, yes, it'd be a bit sort of cozy, you know, I promise you, it is worse for doctors. It's worse for patients. It's worse for taxpayers.
HANNITY: Let me ask you one last quick question here if I can, because, you know, a lot of Europe supported Barack Obama heading into this election. They were — you supported Barack Obama heading into this election. That's why I found your comments fascinating.
Now, the United States of America — I think it's embarrassing to get lectured by leaders of France, the European Union, president of Czech Republic, president by China, the communist Chinese, on how to run a better economy.
What has happened in terms of the faith and hope and trust and confidence that Europe once had in the president?
HANNAN: Yes, you know, I — first of all, I think I can trump your story. We have done all of the things that you've done wrong. We've borrowed more. We've spent more. We've increased the deficit and we pretended that there's some clever plan about it. But we've done something that you haven't done yet, which is, we've gone for the Zimbabwe option. We started just printing more money.
And I actually saw a newspaper in Zimbabwe saying, you know, the poor old Brits. Look at the mess they are in. You know, that having to do this.
HANNITY: Yes. I think you did.
HANNAN: We may have even got the excuse that we have of — so we are pitied by Mugabe's Zimbabwe, which I think trumps even your communist.
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: I've got to run.
HANNAN: What made your country great, what made your people strong and prosperous and free.
HANNITY: Capitalism.
HANNAN: ... that it was small government right from the beginning, right from the declaration of independence. There was a distrust of the concentration of power and a confidence in the freedom of the individual. And you know, people will always make better decisions for themselves than administrators will make for them.
And if — when you lose that, if you Europeanize yourselves, and under the illusion that it's kind of, you know, a bit Hitler and a bit miser and you know, you make yourselves more popular in the world, you will throw away what may people actually respect you, not the least because I understand that it was something...
HANNITY: Daniel, I hope and I pray, and I mean this, that our politicians are listening to you tonight. Thank you for what you said. I hope you'll come back on the program. We appreciate your being with us.
HANNAN: Pleasure to be here, Sean. Thank you.
HANNITY: All right. Thank you. Very inspiring.
Full Transcript: 8/12/2009SEAN HANNITY, HOST: If you want to see what government-run health care system looks like, you need not look any further than the countries like Canada or Great Britain. They already have in place so-called universal health care, and the results, well, they're not pretty.
And joining us now is European member of parliament, in studio for the first time. Now we usually have you, you know, from Britain. What time is it when you're doing this? Three in the morning?
DANIEL HANNAN, MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: It's about 3 in the morning.
HANNITY: Thank you so much or being here. You really have become quite a phenomenon among the conservative movement in this country because you constantly frame the debate as America, you are our friend. You are our brother. You are our ally. And please don't go down this wrong road on health care.
You feel that passionately about it. Why?
HANNAN: Because I'm a friend of this country and I wish it well, and because, as you say, we're an important ally. And what's bad for America is bad for Britain and bad for the free world.
And, you know, at a time when the American state is expanding so much because of the stimulus and the bailouts and the nationalizations, the idea that in the middle of all that, you can also afford this massive state takeover of health care, that has got to be bad news for, obviously for U.S. citizens but also the world economy more generally.
HANNITY: Look, you said to me the last time that I had a chance to talk to you that the United States was about 10 years behind Great Britain in terms of — of nationalizing things. If we were to project 10 years down the road, where is America going to be if, in fact, all these things are implemented?
HANNAN: Bankrupt. And...
HANNITY: Almost there now.
HANNAN: Impoverished and with your credit gone. I mean, where we are now, if I could. We're maybe a couple of years behind Zimbabwe, a few years ahead of you.
I mean, it's — we have — the health care system we have is kind of a relic of an era in Britain when the state was considered all-powerful and benign and when we had rationing and when we had I.D. cards and when we had mass nationalization.
And we're still stuck with it because once you get a system like that, it's almost impossible to get rid of.
How amazing to me that a free people, you know, citizens of a country founded on the principle of independence, independence for the citizen as well as independence for the state, should be contemplating, in peacetime, burdening themselves with a system like this, which puts the power of life and death in a state bureaucracy.
HANNITY: And one of the reasons I wanted to have you back. For example, I have here — last time you were on, it had been decided a week before that you have a government rationing body, your national health service is what it's called. And I read the British papers all the time. And they had just determined that they were not going to provide life-saving medication to women with advanced breast cancer. And I asked you, was that a death sentence, and your answer was?
HANNAN: Yes, I mean, of course. And if you then try to purchase and your own treatment outside the national health service, they will cut off treatment you were getting from the NHS. Because they have this bias against the private sector.
To be fair, some of that — there was such an outcry about that, that some of that has been modified, but you get a pretty good picture of the mentality.
HANNITY: Because it's not uncommon — because we have people from Canada come to America because of long waits and inferior care. We have people from Great Britain coming here for elective surgery and emergency surgery and the same thing with France.
HANNAN: I mean, the thing that you may find hard to believe is that you go along and you say, I need a hip replacement. Or you, know, I need treatment for prostate cancer. And they will say, thank you, the queue is over there. We'll see you in October of next year or whatever it is. I mean, it's unbelievable.
People are left in pain in pain, in positions where they can't work, where they're losing income at the back of the queue, waiting for permission to get treatment. And there's nothing you can do about it.
HANNITY: Do you think the American people have lost, maybe, a certain part of their uniqueness and understanding of what it means to be free?
HANNAN: No, I don't think. I don't think the people of this country have. I really don't.
HANNITY: Why are they supporting it?
HANNAN: See, I wonder whether they really do. I — I'm an elected legislator as well. And no politician can ever afford to forget what his constituents think about things.
But I'm actually quite optimistic. I mean, this — you know, this is a country founded in the principle of small government, big individual. You know, constrained power and free citizens.
And you know, this — the idea that this, of all countries, could put into the power of a state bureaucracy decisions over what kind of medical treatment you get, literally whether you can live or die, is deeply un-American.
HANNITY: I would agree with you, but there is a large segment of the population, for whatever reason, they have almost mentally been conditioned to think that the government is the answer to all their problems.
They promised them Social Security. Social Security in America is bankrupt. Medicare in America is bankrupt. The stimulus, once it passed, promised that unemployment wouldn't go above 8 percent. It's now headed to double digits. There are people that put their faith in government, which I think is the antithesis of the very founding principles you mentioned.
HANNAN: I'm not sure that they're — of course there are people who think that. There are people of good will who think that. We should be honest about this Sean, that people who think that they're not wicked. They've — they have a different position from ours.
HANNITY: You've tried it, France has tried it.
HANNAN: And you know what, all the countries of Eastern Europe tried it.
If you go back to the 1980s, the British health care model was not as unique as it now is, because it was shared by Czechoslovakia, Eastern German and Poland and others have dismantled it, because part of the democratization process was of that was to get rid of the NHS-type system and replace it with something lose closer to —
(CROSSTALK)
The idea that you'd want me to know go down this road to Cuban what North Korean system, is just extraordinary.
HANNITY: It's extraordinary. And the fact that we are — the audience out there is doing their job. They're going to those town-hall meetings of those politicians. They're confronting them. They're embarrassing them.
But even with that happening, Democrats are just, you know, blinders on. They still want to ram it down our throat. There's a real commitment to get this done on the Democratic side, the liberal side in this country.
HANNAN: I don't know if that's going to be the case. I mean, you know, I've met some — I've met some good, sincere, patriotic Americans in both parties, and this is a democracy. And people have to, you know — you have a really good, open, accountable system of government with open source politics, with open primaries.
HANNITY: I'm watching at a distance, and I see your political star has been rising quite a bit. Do you ever perhaps think of a day where you could be the head of a party that could come to power and one day I'd introduce you on this program as prime minister of England?
HANNAN: Let me exclusively tell you I don't think that's going to happen. Tell you what. You know, the last time that a bald party leader defeated a hirsute party leader in the U.S. was when Garfield won in 1888. Right?
The last time it happened in England was in 1831. So I — I'm ruled out on those grounds already.
HANNITY: Daniel Hannan, great to see you on this side of the pond. Thanks for being with us.
HANNAN: Thank you, Sean.
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