Reflections on the Passage of the Health Care Bill

In The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek said, “Probably it is true that the very magnitude of the outrages committed by the totalitarian governments, instead of increasing the fear that such a system might one day arise in more enlightened countries, has rather strengthened the assurance that it cannot happen here.”

Many who voted for President Obama say today that they did not know then what they were going to get. They did not expect that in the shining city on a hill of America we could go the way of the European welfare state; especially not against the strident opposition of opinion expressed by the American people. That a representative democracy could not only defy the wishes of so many, but that they could do it with such blatant disregard for the procedures that should confine them was, apparently, beyond their imagination when they voted for him and the Congress that assists him.

Edmund Burke said, “It is impossible for men of intemperate souls to be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” If that is true, then men born into freedom can give up that freedom simply through their intemperance. Perhaps it was our (the majority of American voters) passion for “hope” and “change” that cast our votes in favor of socialized health care long before today. An ignorant vote is a vote nonetheless.

Now many of those whose vigilance was sleeping are awake. They are engaged and they are angry. They cannot turn the clocks back but they will attempt to compensate for their mistakes by ridding themselves of those who betrayed their trust, hopefully resulting in a repeal of what has been done. Whether or not it is too late is yet to be seen.

I pray that that vigilance lasts. Entitlements are addicting. Even opposition to something before its institution can afterwards become an inability to let it go. Burke also said, “Custom reconciles us to everything.” Paine said, “Time makes more converts than reason.” This wariness must be sustained.

This new direction that we take, if indeed we do, must be towards a return to the Constitution as the rule of law in the United States. Circumvention of the processes of government for the purposes of expediency towards any purpose is a road to anarchy, or more exactly, to governance by the whims of the totalitarian. And the whims of the totalitarian, be they “benevolent” or not, are invariably dangerous.

Speaking of the Constitution, I hear much discussion of the ignoring of public opinion by those who passed this bill. They say it is immoral and undemocratic that the desires of so many people should be shrugged off for the purposes of the ideologues. I will take it a step further with a quote from Milton: “Is it just or reasonable, that most voices against the main end of government should enslave the less number that would be free? More just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain, which can be no wrong to them, their liberty, than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow slaves. They who seek nothing but their own just liberty, have always the right to win it, whenever they have the power, be the voices ever so numerous who oppose it.”

Even if a majority of Americans supported the takeover of the health care of this country, government is bound by the Constitution not to do so. America is not a direct democracy, neither was it meant to be. Those who signed the Constitution understood, as evinced in the Federalist Papers, that liberty must be guarded against the tyranny of the majority, as well as political trends. As Johnny Jacobs said, “Change for the sake of change is Obama.”

Those of us who treasure liberty and understand the intellectual and philosophical history of liberty must be engaged and must convert others. It was a long road to get here. Rush Limbaugh pointed out that, “The history of the world is that of tyranny. Liberty is the exception.” The reform that (hopefully) is coming must be true reform for the sake of and with the understanding of freedom, not simply discontentment with our current government. As long as we can still speak our minds, everyone who desires liberty must do their part and must not grow cynical, disheartened or give up and sit on the sidelines.

My third and final Burke quote is this: “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”

We have a lot of work to do.