When I read McCain’s remark “President Obama respects the Constititution” and saw there was no punch line…I momentarily understood the undying hatred he inspires in many conservatives. What WAS he smoking? And what’s gonna be the fall out if he’s caught with it right before the Obamacare vote?  I mean how can Senator McCain, who spoke with such clarity on Justice Sotomayer’s lack of judicial restraint, possibly think Obama respects the Constitution? And what is with this compulsive “Barack Obama has the best of intentions” nonsense every time he opens his mouth? Seems like everytime McCain criticizes Obama he first makes a disclaimer ” I don’t think he’s destroying our country intentionally or anything” (obviously, I’m paraphrasing)  It  starts to have a “protests too much” kinda feel.

      It ticks me off to hear McCain say “Obama respects the Constitution” because it seems to give legitimacy to the ridiculous “living and breathing document” excuse that liberals give for disregarding the clear intentions of our founders but the thing is-  as wrong as that interpretation is- there’s a large minority of Americans who think that way – and their viewpoint does, in a sense need to be respected.

      And as much as it riles me to hear McCain praising a man that I viscerally dislike, I don’t actually want to hear him talking about Obama the way Rush, myself, my friends, Sarah Palin, or most conservative writers do. (though I thank God for all the above)  McCain was elected on promises of bipartisanship and settling differences – and if the bipartisan guy starts burning bridges…

      Civility is vital to the credibility of McCain’s offer to sit down with Obama and work out a genuinely bipartisan compromise. I realize RedStaters don’t want to see that because nobody expects anything good to come of it but  there’s no real risk of it happening and consider the numbers from Rasmussen today. 71% of everyday citizens don’t think the Democrats should pass any version of Obamacare “unless there are a reasonable number of Republican votes”. 71% don’t think Democrats should try and doing on their own.  So, it would appear politically impossible to ram Obama’s agenda through unless he can successfully paint Republicans as uncooperative and hyperpartisan. That’s going to be hard to pull off when he has a high profile Republican eagerly calling for bipartisanship. McCain is calling his bluff.

    The olive branch is a political neccessity – and it’s the kinda think McCain was elected to do.  It’s fitting that he do it,

          Diane Watson’s remarksthe other day sent me into a surreal Winston Smith like moment like “Am I the only one with a memory?”  ”Think what you want about Fidel Castro” was such an utterly bizzare thing to say I actually googled Castro, brutality to make sure I wasn’t imagining the whole brutal dictator thing. Nah.  From the Miami Herald:

        “According to Amnesty International, no other country of Cuba’s size has held so many political    prisoners for so long under such inhumane circumstances of atrocity and terror…Since taking power in 1959 Castro has arrested opponents on trumped up charges, railroaded them through phony trials, and sentenced them to outrageously long prison terms that sometimes are extended without recourse. Cuban prisoners have been shot, stabbed, denied medical attention, and held in isolation for years at a time. Beatings by guards and police were routine. Some of Castro’s once close allies and collaborators have been executed by firing squads, in one case only 24 hours after the victim’s mother had been assured by Fidel himself that her son would be pardoned” (from “Castro’s Cruelty Must Be Thwarted” by Dick Capen, Miami Herald 9/21/86)

    But hey “think what you want about Fidel Castro” Cubans have health care! Who cares about decades-long imprisonment and arbitrary executions. That’s nothing compared to evil insurance companies who don’t want to “insure” people who are already sick.

    What I can’t get my head around is this: How is it possible that in a Constitutionally limited Republic we have openly communist elected officials? I mean, it’s like if you had a football team and one guy shows up with golf clubs.  It just isn’t possible for a communist to take an oath to uphold the Constitution and mean it. Vladimir Lenin had nothing in common with Thomas Jefferson. His philosophy of government “The scientific concept of dictatorship means nothing else but this:power without limit, resting directly upon force, restrained by no laws, absolutely unrestricted by rules”  is the exact antithesis of what our founders intended.

    Liberal friends of mine act like I’m some kind of paranoaic to oppose Obamacare (alongside more than half the country) “Obama’s not going to break into your house and kill your grandma”. Several things strike me about this statement. For one thing, it’s not like it’s entirely unheard of for government agents to break into people’s homes and kill them as a result of expanding government power. This has happened many times  as part of the war on drugs,  sometimes by accident because the cops were given the wrong address and a few times- unfortunately – because they were bad cops who wanted to seize the person’s property and the drug laws provided a convenient cover. (As discussed by James Bovard in “Lost Rights”.)

Secondly, they always seem to phrase it the same way. “Obama’s not going to break into your house”  as if it’s the breaking in that’s the important part of the equation. Of course he wouldn’t. Even the most brutal regimes  generally didn’t  ”break into people’s houses”, they’d  knock. ”Breaking in” is for those who don’t have authority. Thirdly (and obviously) when it comes to healthcare no “killing” is even neccessary.  Just “Sorry, that procedure has not been approved.” and you have death by bureaucracy.  Leaving aside the question of Obamacare in particular though – of course nobody expects their government to kill them, but it would be naive to think it couldn’t happen. 

     I’ve been reading R. J. Rummel’s book “Death by Government” and have come to the conclusion that communist slaughter doesn’t get nearly enough publicity. Can you name the two biggest mass murderers of the 20th Century? Maybe so, especially now that I hinted, but I got it wrong. I thought it was Hitler & Stalin but it’s actually Stalin and Mao -and, growing up, I don’t even remember learning that Mao was ever especially brutal. Everyone knows the Nazi’s killed 6 million Jews but are they familiar with the knowledge that the Soviets killed 61,911,000 people – most of whom are their own citizens? (and that’s just the conservative, mid range average) Rummel Summarizes that root cause of all the killing “Marxism + Power” if Americans really understood this, really let it sink in, I don’t think “from each according to his ability to each, according to his need” would be mistaken for part of the Constitution.

     Rummel thoroughly studied 218 regimes to look for patterns and concluded ” In each case, as the arbitrary power of a regime increases massively, that is, as we move from democratic through authoritarian to totalitarian regimes, the amount of killing jumps by huge multiples. ” “Power kills and absolute power kills absolutely”. 

      Quite a case for limited government.

       One of the main arguments against Christianity is the whole ” how could a loving God allow such suffering, poverty, evil, disease, etc., etc.” question.  The 2 main explanations I’m familiar with (grossly oversimplified) are: 1. God gave us free will and we mess things up ( if God chose freedom over PERFECTION we should probably value it too….)& 2. He uses suffering to bring us closer to Him, and to refine us. I can’t help reflecting on this with relation to healthcare.

       What do we stand to lose by trying to and government ourselves into a world without suffering? What if you artificially eliminate the risk of poverty by forceably transfering money from the wealthy to the poor? ( Every country that tries that just seems to end up with everyone being poor, but let’s say you could.)  Well – it seems likely that more and more people would fail to recognize their dependence on God and to look to government for (at least earthly) salvation. “Give us this day our daily bread” would not have much meaning if government was guaranteeing provision. Tight finances create a really concrete opportunity to trust God on a day to day basis….

      That’s not to callously suggest that we should sit back and let people suffer so they can grow closer to God. The Bible endlessly commands us to care for the poor (It would be worth investigating why charitable giving doesn’t happen on a larger scale.) but there is a world of difference between cheerful and generous voluntary giving and humble, grateful receiving versus money extracted by threat of force from a grudging, possibly resentful benefactor to be doled out to a grumbling, and probably resentful charge. If the priest in “Les Miserables” had been forced to give away his silver – would it have had a life changing impact?  The power of the gift was in the priest’s love and compassion – not simply the monetary value. Admittedly I am citing fiction, but there is great power in charity that comes from the heart, great power in having been show kindness and mercy. To reduce it all to a battle over resources can hardly help but breed resentment and class warfare.

     Healthcare is an incredibly complicated issue and I don’t mean to be reductive, but I can’t help but think there is a big spiritual issue behind it. Where do you put your trust- God or government? Maybe it is time for those of us who are Christians to look into greatly increasing the impact of private charity – so as to witness to nonbelievers and to show people can be trusted to be compassionate without any help from the IRS.

     Then, of course, there’s the cost to freedom. Individual mandates would force young and healthy independent contractors, artists, entrepreneurs and anyone else who doesn’t get insurance through their job (and suddenly fewer jobs may offer it) to be saddled with the heavy burden of having to buy insurance they don’t want or need. This limits or at least impedes their options, their willingness to invest and to take risks, their time not spent working, their ability to save, to buy a home, etc., etc. There’s been a lot of talk about making the rich pay more taxes, but the bigger blow would be to people like me who are far from rich and  choose not to buy insurance because of the high costs (due to few options and community ratings) and (in my case) a less than stellar network of doctors. Then there is the blow to medical knowledge.  Health insurance doesn’t cover holistic medicine which – in my view- could provide the answer to a curing a lot of chronic conditions that conventional medicine cannot.  If everyone is forced to buy insurance, that likely will limit the money they have to spend on alternative treatments. Those are just a couple of ways that Obamacare would limit freedom that I haven’t seen mentioned much in the many excellent discussions on the subject.

       I must confess to indulging a bit of despair November 5th. I felt like America was being thrown out of an airplane with no parachute and nothing to do but free fall to her doom.  No checks, no balances – just Obama and a Democratic Congress -God help us! Early on I sought denial and  delusion (didn’t watch the news and read only upbeat reassuring, sometimes koolaid laden articles about Obama) like a kid who buries her head and doesn’t want to hear the scary part of the story, but I was quickly heartened.  

       First some background: As a former independent with libertarian leanings, I was used to alienation & lost causes and hadn’t the experience of watching a party come back while I was part of it.  So McCain losing sorta felt like the end of the world…or at least America as we know it.  Prior to 2008, I’d been a citizen without a party. On most issues I would be classified  as conservative – but that didn’t seem to describe most of the actions of the Republicans in power so…. and living in New York City, not knowing many actual Republicans (at least not who admitted it ) I judged the GOP by the media portrayal and the worst excesses and incompetencies of the Bush years. Needless to say, I was not a fan- but there was one exception.  I did like John McCain. Quite a lot. For the first time in my (relatively) young life I was actively supporting a candidate. I did it wholeheartedly and with every spare minute and dollar that I could and…McCain turned out to be the gateway Republican.

         I was- of course – thrown in with Republicans and was exposed to news I’d hardly known existed.  I’d been inclined to hate Fox News (as an extension of a mild case of BDS) , Rush Limbaugh on general principle (I’d never listened but had been raised by a lifelong Democrat…) I’d never heard of the RedState, National Review or the new media – but it was impossible to support McCain and watch CNN and so I soon discovered that Republicans were much different than I expected. Smarter, more principled, more reasonable, etc., etc. and Rush is downright hilarious! If there’s any insight I can impart from having come out of no-man’s land it’s this: outreach to Democrats, independents and the lunatic fringe! ( I use the term affectionately) They may be turned off to the GOP, but it may be because they’ve only been exposed to a straw man version of the party! Or maybe they only know a few obnoxious creeps… We are more open than you’d think.

       Anyway back to my heartening, the inauguration was depressing and I was glad to now have right wing friends to commiserate with – but there’s nothing like unmitigated outrage to waken one out of despondency and the stimulus certainly inspired that.  Obviously everyone right of center was furious but I wondered… what would come of it? Would there be action or just whining? Would our elected representatives sell us out? (As they have, lets face it, too many times)  I was cautious about getting my hopes up,  but the tea parties exceeded all expectations, the House Republicans held the line and I discovered I had a party!

      To be continued tommorow.

Andrea