During Tuesday’s Presidential Debate, moderator Tom Brokaw got right to the heart of the battle for America’s soul. Probably without realizing the import of his question, Brokaw asked both candidates, “Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?” The answers offered by Barack Obama and John McCain were revealing on many levels, demonstrating just how far left America has moved during the last 50 years. Absent was any response remotely close to a bona fide conservative position. Neither candidate posited the obvious: health care is the responsibility of each individual American. Adults are responsible to provide for their own health needs, and parental responsibilities include the provision of health insurance for children. End of story. Sadly, both candidates failed to even mention personal responsibility.
John McCain began his reply on a hopeful note. “I think it’s a responsibility,” said the Republican Senator. But then he made it quite clear the responsibility he was discussing belonged to the government, “in that we should have available and affordable health care to every American citizen, to every family member. And with the plan that — that I have, that will do that.” Never mind the mangled syntax, the eviscerated core value of personal responsibility is much worse. Conservatives across the nation hung their heads in despair. If John McCain disregarded personal responsibility, what would Barack Obama say?
Moving along in the very center of left-wing thought (change be damned), Senator Obama proceeded to proclaim health care “a right for every American.” Dolts from sea to shining sea probably stood and cheered, not realizing how autocratic Obama’s declaration is. Here’s a bulletin for everyone hoping the government will pay for your health care: accepting Obama’s standard for the creation of this brave new right opens a Pandora’s box no one will be able to shut. Just consider Barack’s justification of his position. “In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can’t pay their medical bills…there’s something fundamentally wrong with that.” Health care is a “right” in America because the country is wealthy. In the middle of his answer Barack inserted a sob story about his mother’s experience with supposedly unscrupulous insurance companies, but this interlude merely reinforced his one and only point. America is rich. Therefore, health care is a right.
Obama won’t stop at health care. Indeed, he cannot stop there, for having enough food to eat, living in decent housing, earning a living wage, having adequate transportation, and being exposed to a good education are at least as economically important as health care. “In a country as rich as ours” how can the government abide children going to bed hungry, families living in rat infested dwellings, or students receiving substandard instruction? Folks can’t hold a job without the means to reliably travel to and from work, for goodness sakes. In a country as rich as ours, they are all rights, and the government better set about providing these basic necessities or risk being sued by the ACLU.
If Presidents, or presidential candidates, can create rights with a wag of their tongue, the sky is the limit. If America accepts Barack Obama’s standard for rights — America is rich — an endless string of new rights is just around the corner. In a country as rich as ours, how can anyone in the Northeast be forced to endure winters without adequate heat, or anyone in the Southwest suffer 110 degree summers without proper air conditioning? In a country as rich as ours, how can anyone be uncomfortable? Unfulfilled? Unhappy? Lest you think I’m engaging in hyperbole, only a few decades ago talk of health care as a fundamental right, equal to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was unthinkable. Today, such rubbish is nearly mainstream. If America elects a succession of liberal presidents, being rich will become an American right.
The downside of government-provided services is well-known. With the advent of Great Society welfare programs, millions of Americans decided to qualify for government largesse by diving under income thresholds. Charles Murray and many others have documented the fact that millions of Americans chose to limit their incomes so as to qualify for welfare cash payments, housing, food stamps, and more. America’s underclass is the creation of the welfare state. The destruction of the two-parent black family happened as a direct result of unbridled welfare. Barack Obama’s creation of rights for all Americans will continue and accelerate the destruction of culture and values in our fair land. It’s too steep a price to pay, even “in a country as rich as ours.”
Posted by Jerry Pomeroy in Campaign 2008, Core Values, Health Insurance Debate, Video