Rep. John Campbell: Confounding America's Ideals

Washington Times ^ | August 2, 2009 | Rep. John Campbell

[kellynla]

Prior to the founding of the United States, political theorist and philosopher John Locke developed the theory that government derives its power and authority from the consent of the governed. Benjamin Franklin once wrote that "in free governments the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns." These are the principles that are fundamental to the American system and that have helped shape the nation we know and love today.

Flash forward to the current setting and context. President Obama has made his intent clear on health care: Medical decisions will no longer be made by doctors and patients, but by the omnipotent prowess of the federal government. By proposing creation of a bureaucracy to ration care and determine the cost-effectiveness of care for individuals, he has violated at least one fundamental tenet of America's founding.

The House version of the bill creates 53 new departments, agencies and commissions, but one stands out: the National Institute of Comparative Effectiveness. Though it may sound benign, this bureaucracy will be used to ration care.

A similar institution exists in Britain, called the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, given the curious acronym of N.I.C.E. Rulings on whether people live or die are made frequently in Britain and Canada, and if an individual has a pre-existing condition, is elderly, or for some reason deemed "unfit" for a lifesaving procedure, his chances of being granted that lifesaving procedure become uncertain. With health care rationing, lives will literally hang in the balance, subject to the whims of government.

In fact, it is documented that in countries where socialized medicine is in place, citizens suffer from drastically lower survival rates from ailments such as cancer and heart disease.

[kellynla]

"On balance, survival rates range from around 30 percent to 50 percent below countries with private medicine."

Nuff said!

Prediction: Obamacare will be D.O.A. in the Senate

And Obamacare will be Hussein's "Waterloo!"

11/2010 & 11/2012 won't come soon enough for me.

Semper Fi,
Kelly

[Marty62]

Ditto that!!

[MAD-AS-HELL]

I hope you are right but I believe the crooks in the Senate will forge some sort of crappy Health care legislation that will open the door to more government intervention just like they did with the mortgage fiasco that developed over many decades. This is too important for Buttcrack to lose. He will, once again, use his Chicago strong arm tactics to get it done.

[loveliberty2]

"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle [usurpation of power] and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much . . . to forget it." - James Madison

" . . . nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the penshioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, lusury, foppery, selfishness, meanness and downright venality swallow up the whole society." - John Adams

Further, it was not just the founding leaders who were well-informed about their constitution and approaching threats to its protections. By 1830, when the French jurist Tocqueville traveled America, he wrote admiringly of the citizenry, observing that even the backwoodsman was far more well-read and informed than those in other parts of the world, and that they understood their Constitution, and had with them a Bible and a newspaper. Today, with all modern means of communication, Americans possess little understanding of threats to their liberty and, thus, risk losing it to charlatans whose only goal is power.