British Labour and Conservative MPs lash out at Paul Ryan

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Obama is notable as an expert in communications because while in the Senate he voted on bills relating to the Postal Service. Little-known fact.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Politico, have you ever actually been to Britain or read any study of the NHS written from a British perspective? Yes or no.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

If anybody wonders why Britain is no longer a world superpower, please refer to comments of the NHS loving liberals/socialists in this thread.

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Fixed.

Hmm, I just want to clarify, if I may, but are you inferring that the National Health Service was behind the end of the British Empire?

No, I am stating that NHS is one of the cornerstones of the post-WW II decline. Had Churchill won the election of '45, with Britain never embracing socialism afterward, I am quite confident Britain would be much better off today than it is. To what degree better off is ultimately unknown. I suspect Britain would still be comparable to the superpower it was in the 1910s, for example, albeit to a lesser degree for obvious reasons.

[WARNING! OVERSIMPLIFICATION AHEAD! ALERT!]

Britain didn't decline because of Aneurin Bevan. It declined because of Mohandas Gandhi.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

If anybody wonders why Britain is no longer a world superpower, please refer to comments of the NHS loving liberals/socialists in this thread.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Fixed.

Hmm, I just want to clarify, if I may, but are you inferring that the National Health Service was behind the end of the British Empire?

No, I am stating that NHS is one of the cornerstones of the post-WW II decline. Had Churchill won the election of '45, with Britain never embracing socialism afterward, I am quite confident Britain would be much better off today than it is. To what degree better off is ultimately unknown. I suspect Britain would still be comparable to the superpower it was in the 1910s, for example, albeit to a lesser degree for obvious reasons.

[WARNING! OVERSIMPLIFICATION AHEAD! ALERT!]

Britain didn't decline because of Aneurin Bevan. It declined because of Mohandas Gandhi.

Obviously no single one man all by himself is behind something so drastic as the rise or decline of a nation. But Britain is a warning to America: Ignore the long-term costs of socialism at your own peril.

Giving up Colonial possessions was the right thing to do; embracing domestic socialism was not.

You might very well think that, and I agree with the first part of that sentence, but one of those things was the immediate, proximate, and obvious cause of Britain's geopolitical decline, such as it was (we're still talking about a Security Council-veto-wielding blue-water-navy nuclear state after all); the other was not.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Wait, Politico's making an actual argument that people have actually made...?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Wait, Politico's making an actual argument that people have actually made...?

Believe it or not, there are even Britons who clearly articulate the full extent of the costs of Britain's love affair with socialism. Unfortunately, denial is a powerful force. Certain lies have been indoctrinated into generations of British people since primary school. Some eventually grow to accept that the lies were lies whereas most cling to denialism.

Would these be such illustrious Britons as Margaret Thatcher, she of the three million unemployed and love affair with the suburban parts of the southern half of England to the exclusion of the entire rest of the country?