Posted on 09/02/2009 1:12:44 PM PDT by markomalley
One of the key components of the health care bill that has started the most controversy is the idea of a public option. Liberals have been pushing for universal health care for decades, obviously with no success. Americans are becoming increasingly wary of the Democrats and their attempts to push their costly and overly-ambitious agenda. Despite public anger and polling numbers, liberal Democrats are bound and determined to pass the $1 trillion health care bill, only under their conditions. However, there are Democrats in Congress that aren't so anxious to rush into another costly entitlement.
Senate Majority whip Dick Durbin said that he would be willing to move forward on reforming health care without a public option. Around the same time, Obama's Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, said that a public option is "not essential for reform". Not even a day after Sebelius' "slip up", President Obama and Speaker Pelosi reaffirmed their position that a public option must be included in the health care bill. The moment a leading Democrat mentions the possibility of leaving out the public option, the far-left basically attacks their fellow Democrats for considering bipartisanship.
Earlier last week, Representative Maxine Waters called Senators that oppose a public option "Neanderthals". This took place at a town hall meeting similar to the ones that have taken place throughout the summer. Rep. Waters was not only attacking the Republicans that oppose a public option, but the handful of blue dog Democrats that are smart enough to embrace other ideas for reform. The audience at her meeting was just as loud and out of control as the conservatives were at other meetings. I suppose being loud and talking over congressional leaders during town halls is OK as long as you agree with them.
In typical liberal elitist fashion, Rep. Waters is condemning anyone who slightly disagrees with or is willing to consider an alternative to their far-left, close-minded agenda. Liberals tend to believe that if you oppose their views on a variety of issues, you're ignorant, stupid, and must be from the South. A Rasmussen poll released on August 27th shows that 53% of American's disapprove of Obama's health care bill while only 43% are in favor. So according to Rep. Waters, 53% of American people are Neanderthals not worthy of their opinion.
Similar attacks toward Americans has also occurred within the media. HBO's Bill Maher said in an interview that he believes Americans are "stupid". Although I admire Bill Maher's show and his 30 minute long, bipartisan panels, this statement was quite shocking to me. The bottom line is if you're trying to convince millions of people that your plan is the best way to spend $1 trillion, calling them stupid may not be the best method of persuasion. Democrats have thoroughly enjoyed playing the blame game since President Obama took office. The recession is all George Bush's fault, and capitalism is a global economic system that must be dissolved at all costs. They would say that George Bush also spent hundreds of billions of dollars, despite the fact that President Obama has doubled the deficit since being in office.
Conservatives at town halls are scaring people away from supporting the bill, and more moderate Democrats with a brain are subverting the whole plan. As Democrats begin to accept the reality that their European-style health care overhaul will likely fail, they continue the blame game. Eventually, liberals like Rep. Waters must realize the only people to blame for the ultimate failure of their partisan health care bill is themselves.
The whole point of having a two-party system is to weigh in all ideas and viewpoints to create better policies. This concept is clearly unacceptable to President Obama and the liberal elites in Congress. When the health care debate first began, President Obama asked to have a bill on his desk before the August recess.
Fortunately, Americans are beginning to realize that the Democratic majority in Congress will stop at nothing to rush overly-partisan legislation through without considering other options.
They let me write exactly ONE piece for the editorial page, and THEY asked me to write it... It was the edition that went out after Jerry Garcia died, and the piece was in remembrance of him.
They were uniformly barking moonbats when I was there (The business school was the ONLY exception). I attended ECU and later graduated from UNC-Gay... I consider myself an ECU Pirate, and will never set foot on the UNC-G campus again, if I can help it.
In honor of this article, the following essay is submitted once more today. It is from "Our Ageless Constitution." See
If you have read it on another thread today, just skip it, but it's message is important.
"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise." - Thomas Jefferson
"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." - James Madison
America's Constitution did not mention freedom of enterprise per se, but it did set up a system of laws to secure individual liberty and freedom of choice in keeping with Creator-endowed natural rights. Out of these, free enterprise flourished naturally. Even though the words "free enterprise' are not in the Constitution, the concept was uppermost in the minds of the Founders, typified by the remarks of Jefferson and Madison as quoted above. Already, in 1787, Americans were enjoying the rewards of individual enterprise and free markets. Their dedication was to securing that freedom for posterity.
The learned men drafting America's Constitution understood history - mankind's struggle against poverty and government oppression. And they had studied the ideas of the great thinkers and philosophers. They were familiar with the near starvation of the early Jamestown settlers under a communal production and distribution system and Governor Bradford's diary account of how all benefited after agreement that each family could do as it wished with the fruits of its own labors. Later, in 1776, Adam Smith's INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS and Say's POLITICAL ECONOMY had come at just the right time and were perfectly compatible with the Founders' own passion for individual liberty. Jefferson said these were the best books to be had for forming governments based on principles of freedom. They saw a free market economy as the natural result of their ideal of liberty. They feared concentrations of power and the coercion that planners can use in planning other peoples lives; and they valued freedom of choice and acceptance of responsibility of the consequences of such choice as being the very essence of liberty. They envisioned a large and prosperous republic of free people, unhampered by government interference.
The Founders believed the American people, possessors of deeply rooted character and values, could prosper if left free to:
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Such a free market economy was, to them, the natural result of liberty, carried out in the economic dimension of life. Their philosophy tended to enlarge individual freedom - not to restrict or diminish the individual's right to make choices and to succeed or fail based on those choices. The economic role of their Constitutional government was simply to secure rights and encourage commerce. Through the Constitution, they granted their government some very limited powers to:
Adam Smith called it "the system of natural liberty." James Madison referred to it as "the benign influence of a responsible government." Others have called it the free enterprise system. By whatever name it is called, the economic system envisioned by the Founders and encouraged by the Constitution allowed individual enterprise to flourish and triggered the greatest explosion of economic progress in all of history. Americans became the first people truly to realize the economic dimension of liberty.
Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5
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