I've noticed how discussions about healthcare often move quickly from the subject of healthcare to other less central items. For instance, people who have been diagnosed with a serious illness immediately feel compelled to share the guilt they would have, (and we SHOULD have), if someone would have a similar diagnosis without healthcare. Therefore, we need universal healthcare to assuage such. And if your job includes healthcare then you feel guilt about having your job as well.
Never mind that handing the government absolute control of another 1/6 to 1/5 of our economy will hand them yet more power over the individuals whose votes they so badly want that they will lie, cheat, steal, take bribes, etc., to get. Never mind that this power would singlehandedly change, in a negative way, the relationship between the government and the governed. This would be one small step to avoid guilt and one huge step for Progressivism. Put another way, another large chunk of our individual rights would be handed over to the ostensibly compassionate and egalitarian government. For the last hundred years or so this country has been undermining its very nature. We have used law against itself and when necessary ignored our founding principles in order to move to the Progressive agenda. Personally, I believe we are all made in God's image and that we have certain unalienable rights. Rights that our founders felt compelled to try and protect from the new government it was setting up. While our system of government was elegant and effective it was also flawed. No more or less flawed than man himself. The framers knew that this new government was vulnerable to the same weaknesses that haunt us as individuals. Our inability to exercise, or indifference toward, the idea of self-discipline. We have laws to try to contain these preclusions on an individual basis, (though no law can contain an amoral society), but our system of government needed to protect the people from the negative effects of these facts on the governed. So our constitution provides for a remedy to an out of control government. One that is in the hands of the people but that will not be employed by a citizenry that is happy to willingly hand over its freedoms to the government. Yet, our founders worst case scenarios are coming true. We are watching our government grow into Tyranny. A socialist state that no longer offers its citizens said protection of their individual freedoms from an overreaching state. We have, in fact, become the "Soft Tyranny" that Alexis deTocqueville warned us about. On the one hand we talk about diversity and its import in our culture and our society, and on the other hand we are moving at breakneck speed toward a country that not just rewards but demands sameness in the name of the "greater good" or the "general welfare" of its people. The latter of which is a term that is badly mis-understood these days to the advantage of our power-hungry politicians. We are made in God's image as unique people and are most able to pursue the diversity that is intrinsic in our God-likeness as a free people. But we are now, on every hand, encouraged, intimidated and even compelled to conform to a particular ideology in order to earn the status of a member of this society. We are a long way down the road of sameness while carrying the banner's of diversity and individualism with us on our journey. Unfortunately, these banners are only used to identify us so they know which victim line to put us in to receive our voting instructions and protest slogan signs. After all, we wouldn't want to admit that we are, in fact, practicing precisely what we accuse others of. Intolerance. Do we really think that our laws should compel a Muslim auto mechanic to fix a pig farmers truck even if doing so would violate his strongly held religious beliefs. I don't see any way to answer in the affirmative here. He is living in a country that allegedly protects his individualism. His right to pursue, (of course within reasonable bounds), life, liberty and happiness. Why would the government, (or the media,(please note the absence of the word News)), try to force our Muslim friend to fix the pig farmers truck? It; they; shouldn't. And yet these situations are manipulated and remade into hammers to club certain people, or actually, certain ideas or positions, over the head with to mold public opinion into a more suitable companion for our governments march toward Progressivism. At this point in our history I believe we can restore our country to the lofty goals, (at least the pursuit of such), that our framers put in place. We are quickly approaching a point where we will not be able to find our way back, however, because the path we have been on is being bulldozed and re-landscaped so we can't find our way back. Leave healthcare in the hands of the medical community, actuary tables, and the good people of our great country and get the government out of the way so we can fix the mess they have made.
"It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered but softened, bent, and guided. Men are seldom forced by it to act but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy but it prevents existence. It does not tyrannize but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes and stupefies a people until every nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd ".
Alexis de Tocqueville
