So... Everything the Right Has Said about Health Care is Right?
01/04/10
As one of the warriors against this nightmarish, intrusive government take-over of health care in our country, I'd like to expressly thank Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) for confirming, well, pretty much everything we've ever claimed about this Demcare/Obamacare bill:
A few thoughts on his comments:
1) Isn't this what we "wingnuts" on the Right have been saying all along? This "final bill" is not the end goal. This is the foundation, the irrevocable framework that will establish a cemented center-left political culture in America. We'll exist in perpetuity like the Torries in Great Britian, arguing not over whether government should be in the business of providing health care to it's citizens, but over whom can most efficiently and effectively delivering health care. That whole debate is a canard, as the British are slowly, and bankruptingly, finding out.
Those of us on the Right, namely Gov. Sarah Palin, have been excoriated for even daring to suggest that this legislative push might, in time, exceed exactly what is being proposed at this very moment. It's called mission creep. It happens naturally. But here, Sen. Harkin is suggesting that it is the intention for mission creep not only to happen, but to be encouraged as we build upon the "starter house" of government health care.
2) I find utterly fascinating Sen. Harkin's admission that Congress is establishing an "unalienable right" to health care. Allow me to quote from whence that particular language originates:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Those words come from, of course, the Declaration of Independence. Key among them is the notion that we are "endowed by [our] Creator" with these aforementioned rights. Sen. Harkin's suggestion leaves us only with the conclusion that this "right" has been graciously bestowed upon us by our Congressional overlords, henceforth replacing the role of the creator.
Here's where it is necessary to also delineate between the nature of positive and negative rights. I penned a column on this a while back, from where you can gain more insight.
And as for this notion of the "consent of the governed", it strikes me that most of the governed aren't too stoked over the idea of what Congress is presently ramming down our collective throats.
This all leads to gravely dangerous territory. If our right are not bestowed upon us by our "Creator", than the only other guarantor can be the government.
Beyond that, allow me to elucidate to you the unalienable truth of the government granted right: what the government grants it can surely and swiftly take away. This makes these rights rather markedly unalienable. You tell me the other item in the Bill of Rights that you'd like the Illuminati in Washington to have a say in it's application to you.
Sen. Harkin's replacement of a divine Creator endowing unalienable rights with the government "generously" gifting us the impossible "right" to health care is as embarrassing to the intellect as it is incredibly revealing: Sen. Harkin sees the government as your lord, providing to you as it sees fit. Ask a myriad of top-down governance societies how this eventually turns out.
The irrevocable conclusion of Sen. Harkin's assertion here: Congress is your new God. While this may thrill the atheistic less-than-5% of our country, it is rightfully deeply disturbing, or at least should be, to the rest.
This is not - again, I repeat, not - about what is in the language of this bargained peace-meal bill that passed though Harry Reid's Senate. This is about setting up the premise that the government has a right to have a say in what kind of health care you receive.
From there can come no good end.