Why the Mandate must die!

Once there was an idea, a bold and transformative idea that caught the interest of some, and sparked debate in others. The idea was that perhaps the government should make a law that said everyone has to buy health insurance. This idea was cunning, for a little while it even pretended to be a conservative idea, and some of the best conservative thinkers thought, “My what a clever little idea you are!” You see there were some who were not paying for the health services they received. Hospitals had to treat them by law and they never paid for what they took. Many of these people weren’t even legal residents of our country, and they liked to “stick” the rest of us with their bills. The hospital still had to pay the doctors who treated them, the nurses who cared for them, the custodians who cleaned up after them, the technicians who ran their tests, buy the machines to process their tests, the syringes and IV bags and on and on, so they had no choice but to charge the people who did pay more, to cover the costs of those who never paid. One of the conservatives to briefly buy into the mandate’s chicanery was Newt, little surprise, Newt is a bombastic speaker and a lover of big solutions and revolutionary thinking, even the Heritage Foundation, advisers to the great conservative Prince Valiant Reagan the Great, listened to the lie of the Mandate Idea that it cared for personal responsibility and jumped on board for a while. A certain Massachusetts governor even decided to enact a mandate on the good citizens of his state.

Alas the truth was bitter! For you see the Mandate cared nothing for health care, and it despised the very notion of personal responsibility it claimed to support. Mandate was really and assassin sent to kill the one thing Americans love more than life, liberty. You see, personal responsibility demands that each person be responsible for his or her own health care. You either buy insurance or you take the calculated risk of not doing so and choose to spend that money else where knowing that any medical needs will need to be paid out of pocket.  This is choice. This is liberty. Mandate says government must make that decision for you.

Ah but herein lies the rub!  For the mandate to do what it does a darker more insidious power must lie behind it.  The dark force which gives Mandate its life is the most sinister of all: unlimited governmental power. If the government can compel a citizen to buy insurance, it can decide what type of policy it must be, it can determine what insurance companies must offer, how much they can charge, what procedures are covered and for whom. Then they can decide how much of   a person’s own money they may spend. It can order religious organizations to participate in plans that cover contraception and abortion even though the specific doctrine of their church believes these things sinful. If it can do this then freedom of religion is at the whim of government. Rights are given by government not endowed by the Creator. No right is inalienable. The individual does not have sovereignty over himself; he exists merely by the good grace of the state; that which is his property is given only by the generosity of the state.

In the end, this country isn’t big enough for the both of them, Mandate and Liberty cannot coexist. The line is drawn and the duel has begun. One of them will not be here for our children.

If Liberty is to survive the Mandate must die.

Keep on the Firing line.