A wonderful historian named William H. McNeill makes a powerful  case for the idea that humans are chewed on by two kinds of parasites: the little ones and the big ones.  Our little parasites go from hair lice and gut worms down to germs and viruses.  Our biggest parasite -- ever since we learned to fend off grizzly bears and rattlesnakes -- is each other.

When you think about it that way, most societies seem to be heavily parasitized by their ruling classes.  Or do you really think that Saddam Hussein needed those 42 palaces?  

Along with a million horrors, the HIV epidemic brought a deeper medical understanding of retroviruses, clever nano machines that drill molecular holes into living cells.  From there they drift through the cell to the control room, the nuclear DNA, and take it over to make a zillion copies of themselves, often killing the host.

Retroviruses are like a speedboat full of grinning Somali pirates who go careering hundreds of miles into the Atlantic to take over passing supertankers, by randomly firing off their ancient AK-47's at anybody on board. When they succeed, they get great big ransom payments from Lloyds of London. Everybody's happy, and the pirates go back to Mogadishu and make a lot of little baby pirates.   

This is what liberals like to call a sustainable lifestyle.  Under Obamanomics it's a kind of Stimulus Package for the world.

Pirates have been raiding off the coast of Africa for thousands of years. Thomas Jefferson tried to get rid of the Barbary Pirates with no luck.  That was the first American attempt to bring democracy to Tripoli.  Obama doesn't know it, but he is acting (without Congressional authorization) in a 200-year-old American tradition.

Muslim pirates raided the coast of Britain and Ireland well into the 19th century, making off with slaves and whatever else they could carry away. The peace-loving Swedes and Danes went a'viking for almost a thousand years after the arrival of Christianity in Europe, reaching as far south as Constantinople and west to Moscow. It helped them to get through those long northern winters, cooped up with the wife and kids. (Nag, nag, nag, why don't you go a'viking? she says. So I go, Oh, fer goodness sake  ...)

The totalitarian Left is about as piratical as humans get, witness Stalin's Communist Party -- and Leftist tyrannies in scores of other countries they are all trying to make us forget about.  There are reports today of execution trucks driving around China to kill, refrigerate and "harvest" the organs of criminal Falun Gong followers, to supply the human organ trade. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times would no doubt approve of this example of the efficiencies of One-Party Government.  Get your heart transplant fresh from the warm and palpating donor!

No doubt the Chinese political elite, like President Hu, receives the pick of the "harvest."  You might remember that President Hu was Obama's Deep Bow #3 a couple of years ago.  The most famous Buddhist leader in the world, the Dalai Lama, was chased out the backdoor of the Obama White House, right past the garbage bins, for fear that Hu might get annoyed by our President's fearless recognition of Occupied Tibet.  It happens that President Hu rose to power by ruthlessly oppressing the Tibetans.  Mr. Hu is Pontius Pilate without the compassion.   Obama doesn't leave much doubt about his real values, does he?

Whether those reports about those human butchery trucks in China are true or not, they reflect the same spirit that led Prime Minister Gordon Brown to declare a couple of years ago that all bodies of freshly dead British citizens belong presumptively to the State -- which paid, after all, to keep their sorry carcasses alive by way of the National Health "Service."

Really. You can find it here.

Can't you just see the geniuses who made up Obama Scamacare getting ready, lickety-split, to import that grand idea to the United States? It solves urban blight and the cost of Baby Boomers, all in one grand slam.  

"Thrift, Horatio, thrift! " scoffed Hamlet, "the funeral-baked meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables."

As in Hamlet's Denmark, in the socialist superstate there will be no time to mourn the dead.  Gotta flash-chill those organs while they're fresh.

And who do you suppose has the first dibs on the fresh "harvest"? Yes. It's Gordon Brown and his fellow travelers! It's the Obamas and Blairs, the Chiracs and Putins who are first in line. The socialists control the medical monopoly in Britain, and you can be very sure they are first in line. 

When you parasitize the productive, all power belongs to the people.

Or, at least, power belongs to the people who control the people.  

Gordon Brown is a thrifty Scot, 'tis true, but he's also a True Believer in the all-knowing and all-mighty State, which is much more to the point.  Adam Smith was also a Scot, but as Professor of Moral Theology -- and therefore a believer in the immortal soul -- Smith would hardly approve of cannibalizing one's loved ones for parts. Adam Smith admired free markets, but only for moral and responsible people.

How quaint! But then Smith lived fifty years before Karl Marx figured out that all morality is for middleclass suckers.

So at what point does a power class become a huge parasite?