The Bell Curve:

I’ve been following Steve Lopez’s reporting for the Los Angeles Times from the free clinic in Inglewood with two diverse feelings: envy and anger.

Envy because I used to cover stories like this from the site of action instead of from clips at my home office.

And anger because, in this richest of all countries, Americans by the millions are in desperate need of health care they can’t pay for through no fault of their own.

So they drive many miles and wait many hours for help they may not get that most civilized countries provide for all of their citizens.

In his Daily Pilot column Sunday, Judge James P. Gray asked, “What actually is the basic liberal philosophy?” (“Keep government out of the marketplace,” It’s a Gray Area). We’ll get to that in a minute. But the traveling clinic in Inglewood provides a quick answer.

This liberal would look at the human needs first of all, then to the means of meeting those needs, and, finally, if at all, to the political impact of whatever course of action is chosen.

Now back to Gray, who defined the liberal philosophy as “Government can best address — if not cure — the ills of the world by spending money.”

That’s it, except for a parenthetical aside that “of course, it is our money that the government is spending.” Thus, I picture this view of liberalism as a harried and mindless shopper who wants to be loved and, to that end, is out to spend the rent money on needlessly expensive gifts.

If that’s the way the judge really sees liberalism, I can’t blame him for worrying about the fate of his country under what we have been led to believe is a liberal administration.

Fortunately, us local lefties can reassure you that this take on liberalism is light years distant from what and where and who we are.

So just for the record, we don’t believe that government, however much money it spends, is a cure-all for anything. We don’t believe the private sector is, either.

We look — as the founders of this country did — for the strengths of both, without demonizing either, to address our problems. My dictionary defines liberalism as “tolerant of different views and standards of behavior in others.”

And George Washington offers this: “As mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.”

And I can’t resist including on my experts panel columnist Dave Barry, always the equal opportunity humorist, who explained that liberals would stop to help a stranded motorist and accidentally set the car on fire while trying to fix it, while Republicans wouldn’t bother to stop because they wanted to be on time for dinner at the country club.

Meanwhile, the health-care debate in the U.S. continues to generate more heat than substance. One such disputed area is the performance of national medicine in the democracies of western Europe.

This has become a feeding ground for a range of views, because it is easy to find examples of both high praise and horror stories.

And because the opponents of “socialized medicine” in the U.S. shout the loudest — calling Britain’s National Health Service “evil“ and “Orwellian” — they are heard the most and have inspired a wave of loud support for the NHS in Britain.

I have a Newport Beach physician friend, recently back from a lengthy trip to England, who would agree with that support.

Because of the threat of a detached retina, he was told by his local specialist to seek help immediately if floaters developed in his eyes.

When that happened while he was visiting his son in London, he went to an NHS emergency room, where he was checked out immediately by a paramedic. He was passed along to a doctor for an eye examination after filling our a simple check-in form that didn’t ask for either insurance or money.

The next day, carrying only a single piece of paper from the emergency room, he was seen by a specialist — and approved for travel — in one of the finest hospitals in the world.

I’ve had a similar view of French national medicine through the eyes of Howard and Francoise Appel, close French friends I’ve visited frequently for three decades.

Over the past five years, they have had to deal with a multiplicity of health problems that required both surgery and extensive rehabilitation. I’ve watched the French system deal with these problems quickly, efficiently and always with the care and comfort of the patient primary.

Again a single example, but one that would play off powerfully — if looked at fairly — against the demonizing of single-payer medicine in this country.

In the final analysis, the strongest statement in support of national medicine has come from the changing nature of ruling parties worldwide.

Although conservatives have held power on and off in virtually all of these countries, none have shown interest in replacing the single-payer health-care system,

It isn’t going to happen here, at least not in the foreseeable future.

But along with the success of Medicare, the experience gleaned in current single-payer systems could offer useful knowledge in helping us to craft a system that would be politically acceptable and socially useful in this country — and would offer new hope to those long lines of sick and often desperate people who can no longer afford proper health care.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.