After what feels like an interminable period of discussion, debate, compromise, and a tremendous amount of ranting and raving, Congress is now poised to cast a vote on a health care reform package later today. Of course, coincidental to that scheduled vote is the deadline for any last ditch fear-mongering. Once again, we have no shortage of Chicken Littles driving a legion of frightened Henny Pennies to hysteria with false claims that the sky is falling. As usual, yes, it's the end of the world (yawn). We are, at long last, taking action to fix some of the problems in our health care system, and this is provoking widespread panic that we will now be in the evil clutches of communism, fascism, of some other ism that some hopelessly deluded white guy can blame as the reason he won't earn $47.2 million next year, even though he has never earned more than $40,000 a year in his life and offers the free market nothing that would cause that to drastically change under any circumstance.
Sure, I can get a kick out of watching Rep. Steve King (R-IA), talk to Glenn Beck about the sacrilegious horror of this vote happening on the Sabbath in Lent, or Rep. Ron Broun (R-GA), lashing out against the bill as he makes sure to squeeze in a reference to "The Great War of Yankee Aggression." For those of you living in the 21st Century, he's talking about the Civil War, which ended for reasonable people 145 years ago. I'll admit that this has been mildly amusing theater of the absurd, but enough is enough. The dogs have barked and it's time for the caravan to move on. We've already paid far too much attention to silliness ranging from death panels to claims that this is literally the end of United States. When the most frightening bogeymen said to be lurking in this bill naturally don't materialize, I fully expect many of the ranters to say they never made such ridiculous claims. Depending on whether or not they actually believed their own nonsense, they will either go from ignorance to dishonesty or from one lie to another.
For those of you who are still terrified that this represents a Constitutional crisis the likes of which we've never seen before, as you cite Thomas Jefferson on the evils of a powerful central government, let's go to the history books, shall we? Over 200 years ago, President Jefferson spent the taxpayers' hard-earned money to buy land and double the size of the country. That too was thought to be an outrageous breach of the Constitution. Like the current health care debate, this was extremely divisive, and a vote to block the Louisiana Purchase barely failed in the House by a vote of 59-57. Let me go way out on a limb here and suggest that even health care would get pushed off the front page if President Obama went out and bought Canada.
We made the Louisiana Purchase. THE SKY DIDN'T FALL; the country subsequently grew and prospered, and now Jefferson is revered as the very model of someone believes in a tightly restrained central government. FDR passed a series of measures people claimed were Socialist and would destroy our country. THE SKY DIDN'T FALL; the country subsequently grew and prospered, and now FDR's image is on our dime. LBJ passed Medicare and Medicaid. THE SKY DIDN'T FALL; the country subsequently grew and prospered, and now those opposed to the current health care reforms are screaming about how it will take money away from Medicare. Do you see a pattern emerging? However the vote goes, we'll be just fine.
