Careless With The Health of the Republic

Well, they went and did it.

Last night the Democratic party, after demonstrating beyond the shadow of any lingering doubt which might have remained that no principle lacks a price tag, no constituency's wishes are too important to simply ignore, no Constitutionally-delineated procedure is too crucial to subvert, by hook and by crook (and even then, by the narrowest of margins)...they went and did it. And today, my Facebook is flooded with my Liberal friends' rhapsodies on the glory days to come, the alleviation of anxieties, the freedom to strike off in unconventional directions and create, etc. (not to mention one "middle finger" to Republicans. Gracious, that).

All I see is a Nation that just got force-fed the chance to become just a little bit more infantilized. Well, that, and a series of Power Point presentations by Beijing bankers to a conference room packed with representatives from Tehran, Caracas, Damascus, Moscow, et. al.

Today, I am simply too dejected and crestfallen (and not from a particularly high crest, either) to go on at length. Fortunately, there is Doctor Zero for just these moments.

The call of freedom requires you to turn away easy solutions offered by corrupt politicians. It’s not a “solution” anyway – just the gateway to another, heavier imposition on your liberty down the line. If its authors believed otherwise, why would they use tricks and lies to chisel out a “deficit-neutral” ten-year forecast from the Congressional Budget Office? A free man dismisses such deception with contempt, and demands to know what happens in Year Eleven. A free woman looks at a “crisis” in a heavily regulated market and commands government to remove itself to undo the damage it has already caused. What is the final form of a State that is rewarded for its failures with more power? We already know that name, don’t we?

Tonight, the Democrat Party declares war on the American middle class. They are gambling on the forced creation of an entitlement we’ll be too exhausted and weary to reject – no matter how poor its quality, corrupt its inception, or unbearable its cost. We do have one last chance to strike this down. There is no reason any Democrat up for re-election in 2010 or 2012 needs to retain their seats. They don’t own those seats, any more than the Kennedys owned Massachussetts. There’s no reason the Democrats need to exist as a viable political party after 2012. Obama can be their last President.

 Once the fog lifts, I intend to start working as hard as I can to bring that about.

Ordinarily, I am very much a divided government guy, and the very concept of all-but eradicating a political party makes me itchy. The need to hash out compromises with the other side keeps the radicals on both sides at bay (in theory), and keep our senators and congressfolk responsive to their constituents (when they are inclined to act rationally).

But the Democrats very simply have not acted in a way which merits our trust to continue working in the People's House. They have arrogated to themselves the role of societal architects, trampling on the manifest will of the people to seize what they have deemed the people to need. They need to be punished for this deplorable travesty. Then, perhaps, duly chastened and with a renewed respect for the wishes of the voters  they swear to serve, they can restore balance to the Hill...but in rather the same way that Anakin Skywalker restored balance to the Force, but with ballots, not blasters.

It won't be pretty. It will temporarily leave the GOP with the kind of monobloc power which they so shamefully squandered between 1994 and the routs of  '06 and '08. That must not be allowed to happen again, but this is where the Tea Partiers come in. The Republican Party already shows signs of the focusing of the mind  which defeat and dissent can bring, when everything lines up just right. By branding themselves as the party of hope and liberty and opportunity, by bringing a clear and articulate message, by heeding the admonishments of the Tea Parties, the GOP can turn the victories -- whose margins I intend to work to widen in whatever meager ways I can bring to bear -- into a moment of clarity for a Nation grown sclerotic under the fanatical and unaccountable engineering of the Democrat party.

This beast can be slowed by amendments and court challenges (and plenty of them!). It can be illuminated for all to see, in all its monstrous perversity. Its final implementation can be delayed well into mid-term election season. But in order for it to be brought down for good and all, in order to pave the way toward common-sense, incremental, truly deficit-neutral (or deficit-negative), market-based approaches to the provision of health coverage, the work is going to be slow and messy...until the point that a real electoral mandate allows Obamacare to be put down with a swift, sure stroke.

Until then, it will be a work of excruciating inches. But the very definition of what it means to be an American is at stake: are we a mob of dependents and "consumers," or a vibrant society of creators and problem-solvers? Is the health of this Nation to be measured in boons bestowed or in prizes won? Will we be so conditioned to seek Centrally Planned solutions to life's vicissitudes that we we forget our National legacy in the echoes of a long frontier, its emphasis on ingenuity and industriousness reflected in entrepreneurship and industriousness and social mobility/meritocracy, yoked to what persists in being (rightly) called "The American Dream?" Not if I can do anything about it!


The health care delivery system in this country is indeed shot to hell. But one must be very careful when addressing those shortcomings in delivery to preserve the incentives built into capitalism which have made such an enviable edifice of that which is delivered. I believe that such deliberate measures can be achieved, and that it is well within the capabilities of the American people to achieve them. But, as Chris Muir depicts in today's "Day By Day," we need to forget whatever it is we feel we may deserve, and prepare for one hum-dinger of a fight.