Are You Kidding Me?

“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” ~Thomas Jefferson

Yes, I have been absent for quite awhile. My only excuse is busyness and trying to finish up an MBA degree. Never fear, in just a few short weeks, I will be free to opine on the issues of the day. However, since I am off today, I thought I would take a few minutes to pass along something that happened this morning.

I was watching the news (MSNBC……yeah, I can’t write that with a straight face, it was Fox) this morning, and they had a Representative on talking about the health care issue.

When the anchor asked him about a proposal on the Senate side to tax people’s health care benefits, except those who are union members, he said that union members are covered under collective bargaining agreements, and the government shouldn’t be getting in the middle of agreements between private parties.

I almost spit my coffee out onto the TV! This guy should get some sort of award for having the guts (gall?) to get on the television and say that (especially someone from the Democrat party). Let’s see…..

• Bank of America/Merrill Lynch
• T.A.R.P.
• AIG
• Chrysler
• General Motors
• The “pay czar”
• “Cap and Trade”

I know, I  know….”but they took tax dollars, so we have a right to tell them what to do!” Really? Our government has a right to abrogate contracts? They have a right to strong arm a corporation into purchasing another? They have the right  to, essentially, determine who wins and who loses in the free market?

I hope that the readers of this blog are not so naive to think that your government did these things to “protect working class Americans”. That rhetoric is as hollow as it is played out…although I must admit the whole class warfare thing has worked out pretty good for Mr. Obama. The government is no more interested in your well-being as it is in giving back the power that we have so willfully given it over the past 75 years or so.

In the end, the health care debate isn’t really about health care…just as much as the “green” debate isn’t really about the environment. It is about power and control. I am sure there are people involved in the debate that mean well. But you know what the saying is about the road to Hell. And I believe that even those who say that the government should socialize medicine (or anything else for that matter) generally really think that is the best solution. But when that person is part of the government, they are going to “solve” problems in a way that increases the government’s power and control.

Power and control are a zero-sum game. If the government increases its power and control, ours as individuals necessarily decreases. There is no magic formula whereby the power over our own lives increases as the government’s power increases as well. It just doesn’t work that way. Governments are why the phrase, “give them an inch, they’ll take a mile” was invented. Out Founding Fathers understood this…that governments (of all kinds) become more tyrannical over time by their very nature.

So when the government tells me its wants to “help” me by reforming health care, please excuse my skepticism, because I seriously doubt that any government “reform”…of whatever area…is going to lead to a solution that is going to increase my control (i,e, freedom and liberty) over my own life.