The Progressive magazine’s 100th-anniversary issue, published in April, consists mainly of excerpts from issues in each year since 1909. The entry for January 1917 – nearly 93 years ago – expands the much-disputed definition of “American Exceptionalism.” It begins:

“At present the United States has the unenviable distinction of being the only great industrial nation without universal health insurance.”

The third graf has a particular, um, currency. It begins

“Certain interests which think they would be adversely affected by health insurance have made the specious plea that it is an un-American interference with liberty.”

An estimated 45,000 of our fellow citizens die each year because they are not treated for treatable diseases. They lose their liberty prematurely, utterly, and forever. So the more “un-American interference” there is, the more Americans will survive and thus be enabled to preserve their liberty.