By Ken Blackwell on 8.6.09 @ 6:07AM
Americans are resisting Obamacare's trip down the road to
serfdom.
The more Americans learn about ObamaCare, the more concerns they
have. Opposition to mandatory abortion funding is strong -- up in
the high 70-percent figures according to some reliable polls.
This is not just pro-life sentiment speaking. Yes, the majority
of Americans have told the Gallup organization they are pro-life.
But this strong reaction goes even further. Millions of Americans
who count themselves pro-choice are opposed to being forced
themselves to pay for abortion-on-demand and are conscientiously
opposed to forcing their pro-life neighbors to pay for it.
Mark Steyn has written powerfully about the entire question of
government-provided health care. Steyn says even if
costs could be contained by the new government takeover, and
even if government health care did not lead inevitably
to rationing -- two conditions most analysts consider highly
unlikely -- Americans should still reject ObamaCare.
Why? Because, Steyn says, when the government takes over health
care it fundamentally changes the relationship between citizen
and state. People are no longer patients to their doctors or
constituents to the government. They become supplicants. I will
say it: they become serfs.
Serfs were peasants tied to the land in Old Russia. In the same
way, we will be tied to the government, dependent on the
government for our very lives. That's the deeper meaning of the
Five-Year Plan Obama has defended. This is not a Soviet-era Five
Year Plan. Instead, it's the legal obligation for all health care
recipients to discuss their "end of life" decisions every five
years. This is not optional. This is not voluntary. It is
mandated. It is national conscription.
It would seem that this provision applies only to the
elderly. But why should it? After all, medically dependent
persons do not have to be elderly. Any one of us could collide
with another vehicle on the highway any day-and require long-term
treatment in a neurological hospital. Certainly, head trauma
cases are tragically entering our military hospitals every day
from the battlefields of Afghanistan. These are mostly very young
patients. Should they not have "end of life" plans made, too?
That, at least, will be the reasoning of the government-appointed
Tsars who will be assigned to control health care costs and do
the inevitable triage of medical treatment options.
"It is at once the safeguard and the glory of mankind that they
are easy to lead and hard to drive." That was the wisdom of
Winston Churchill. President Obama is finding this out.
The harder he drives people to enact his health care plan, the
more they seem to dig in their heels -- not just Americans at the
grassroots, but also their Representatives in Congress.
How can this be? Didn't the President just win a strong victory?
Of course he did. But so did FDR in 1936. Roosevelt swept the
nation, burying the hapless Alf Landon. Republicans carried only
two states in that bruising contest-Maine and Vermont.
No sooner had Roosevelt won his second consecutive
landslide, however, than he came to grief trying to pack the U.S.
Supreme Court. His own Democrats in Congress rebelled.
Franklin Roosevelt was a man with long experience in
government-as state lawmaker, as Cabinet member, as Governor, as
President. This is in marked contrast with President Obama. He
spent little time in each office in his meteoric rise to power.
He rose because he has an "aura."
That aura, says Michael Barone in the Washington
Examiner, made Obama a formidable candidate. But now, when
the hard task of governing is before him, Barone writes, Obama's
lack of experience is showing. "On the major legislation
considered this year-the stimulus, cap and trade, health care-the
Obama administration has done little or nothing to set down
markers to provide guidance, to establish boundaries and no-go
areas."
There are not enough Republicans in Congress today to stop
ObamaCare, just as there were not enough GOP members in 1937 to
stop Roosevelt's "court packing scheme." They must reach out
across the aisle.
We who are concerned about fundamental issues of liberty and
dependency, of life and death, must seek bipartisan support. When
issues like abortion mandates-in-health-care and forced
end-of-life-decision-making are raised, they have a strong
resonance with millions of Democrats, Republicans, and
Independents. After all, everyone has a life. If you'd like to
make the key decisions about yours without government mandates,
join the resistance.
topics:
Health Care
