It is the height of either arrogance or stupidity to reduce any idea below its point of natural complexity in order to cast someone else as lacking intellect because of a disagreement over philosophy or practice.
I grant that there are many people who have all sorts of wrong reasons for opposing the path toward nationalized health care the law just signed into law places us on, but do not insult me by claiming that my reasons are just as invalid.
You see, I believe in the fundamental superiority of small, limited federal government. I can look at the past century of American history and see the decay inside the shining beacon of greatness as one social program after another shaves away the wealth accrued by generations of Americans who have been willing to work hard and play by the rules so that others can do nothing but consume what someone else has given them.
I can see that, while many American liberals choose to focus incessantly on the trillion dollars spent over the term of the Bush administration fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, they ignore they ignore the $4 trillion and counting spent in the past year and a half on government expansion and social welfare. These same liberals lament the surpluses lost at the end of the Clinton era while ignoring that the Obama administration will have spent in four years what the Bush administration spent in eight.
I know that there is no way our nation can continue to pay for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, socialized education, nationalized health care, and whatever other welfare programs the government seeks to force those of us who actually work hard to pay for while also paying for the interest on a debt that could be as high as $20 trillion, or 120% of the GDP, by 2025. I also know that there are other ways to provide for the kind of benefits those programs represent without taxing Americans into poverty for the sake of the impoverished. I know that, before the 1930s, social welfare was a local concern that could be taken care of locally because power over 30 percent of the nations income was not concentrated in the hands of 536 people.
I don’t want people to suffer or go without any more than anyone else does, but I also do not want to help those people’s suffering or want by punishing those who do not suffer or want. I know that there are other, better, less expensive ways to help people in all sorts of need that do not require massive government spending to accomplish their goals.
My opposition to the health care reform law and to the Obama administration in general is based on these specific, principled ideas. I have 226 years of American history and hundreds of years of the philosophy and practice of the fundamental libertarians who came before me on my side, most of whom observed that liberty cannot survive when one group of people realize they can use the government to get something they want at cost to another.
So, if you want to debate me on the fundamentals of socialism versus libertarianism or try to convince me how it is acceptable for the government to redistribute wealth, then try as you may, but do so while dealing with the fact that my positions are as informed and self-developed as yours. Otherwise, you are just as ridiculous as the people you rightly point out are reducing the problem too far.
DLH
