Youthful inexperience

Many people are writing and speaking about The Atlantic article written by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who was a chief architect of the Affordable Care Act and a chief medical adviser to the Obama White House. He is 57-years-old now, and says he does not want to live past age 75. What do you want to bet he'll change his mind by the time he gets to, oh, say 75?

Victor Davis Hanson writes:

Yet our present lives would be poorer had we taken away history’s 75-year-olds. The great Athenian playwright Sophocles (who wrote until his death in his 90s) would never have crafted some of Greece’s greatest tragedies. The Founding Fathers would not have had the sober wisdom of Benjamin Franklin in his later years. The late Jacques Barzun, the greatest contemporary student of Western values and history, published his masterpiece, “From Dawn to Decadence,” when he was 93. Henry Kissinger, at 91, just published a magnum opus, “World Order.”

Some of the most gripping volumes about World War II would never been written by a supposedly too old Winston Churchill. Had Ronald Reagan refused medical care and hoped to die at 75, the world would never have heard at Berlin, “Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev.”

Many might suggest that a naive and clueless Emanuel in his early 50s did the nation a lot of damage by dreaming up a lousy, big-government health-care scheme. Under Obamacare, millions lost their doctors and existing health care. They have paid more for deductibles and premiums, as the nation increased its debt to only marginally cover more of the uninsured.

Most Americans can cite a grandparent’s wise advice and aggregate experience as changing their lives for the better. I was blessed that three of my grandparents lived well beyond 75 and taught me everything from riding a horse and farming to accepting setbacks with calm and dignity.

Who knows — had Dr. Emanuel been asked to help draft an Affordable Care Act in his mid-70s, we might not have had to collectively suffer from his youthful inexperience.

Read more here.