I spent last Sunday at a party at a friend’s house, so I missed the health care vote. Good thing too. I wasn’t in much of a mood for a funeral.
It was a Pearl Harbor moment, the healthcare vote. You know, one of those times when the world forever divides into what came before and what comes after. I doubt anybody noticed. Most of us partied on, myself included. It was as good a way as any to wring down the curtain on the great experiment in democracy. I much prefer an Irish wake to a grief-stricken funeral.
A great country, long ailing, finally expired on Sunday. And just as it has been for three generations now, the people hardly noticed. Some sat mesmerized before the collective TV, watching the inevitable collapse of a way of life without truly realizing it, wondering what comes next. How appropriate. We’ve long been a generation of watchers. What better way to celebrate the demise of a dream? Then some of us, like me, went through the chow line for seconds. Opportunity ambition, hard work, all hallmarks of a nation steeped in the nobler elements of the human spirit were snuffed out for all time by the expedient leadership of a corrupt Congress, and the stroke of a pen by an unscrupulous president. And not a shot was fired.
Then there’s freedom, let’s not forget that. With all its hazards and pitfalls, freedom also took a mortal blow on Sunday, sacrificed on the altar of self-indulgence for cradle to grave care at the hands of a benevolent dictatorship.
Here’s a clue – a benevolent dictatorship is still a dictatorship.
But . . . but . . . what’s the big deal. The Republicans are coming in November. They’ll repeal it.
Is that so? Let’s take a look at some of the recent, and not so recent, major pieces of societal-altering legislation.
Social Security was instituted to provide a baseline safety net for the indigent during the Great Depression. Of course it accomplished nothing of the sort. And Democratic lawmakers, including FDR assured conservative opponents in Congress that the administration would revisit the policy as soon as the economic emergency had passed. That worked out really well as we all know. Oh, and the payroll taxes that were never supposed to go higher than 1%, read ‘em and weep, folks. If you think those taxes have maxed out, hang on to your wallet. Then again, don’t bother. What good would it do now?
Then there’s Medicare. A comprehensive system of care for senior citizens designed to be cheap, efficient and all encompassing. Get a load of how well it accomplished those lofty goals. It’s still with us, but unlike the Eveready bunny, it’s bankrupt, restrictive and running on empty, just in time for that huge glut of baby boomers to start hitting the rolls. What fitting irony. The ultimate entitlement generation with a terminal case of Gimme-Get-Me-I-want” gets nothing when they need it most.
And, of course, there’s the law conservatives love to hate. Roe v. Wade. We were so certain the Supreme Court would strike down this abomination on moral grounds alone when it was signed into law in 1973. Thirty-seven years and 52 million butchered babies later, how’s that working out for us? And now we’ve got ObamaCare©, which will supplement the government-sanctioned practice of the wholesale murder of innocents by subsidizing it as well. So don’t kid yourself that this recent monstrosity isn’t the law of the land. It is. And it’s here to stay.
What’s the payoff for the radical left, you may wonder? There are a couple of things.
Chief among them, it puts a knife in the heart of the sputtering economy. Oh, that’s just hysterical hyperbole, you say. Someone who’s been listening to a little too much Glenn Beck. Excuse me, Herbert Hoover accomplished the exact same thing in 1931. Only he did it by accident rather than design. Hoover concluded that the solution to what then was a severe recession was to balance the federal budget. He attempted to do so by raising taxes. He pushed the economy off a cliff. What was a significant downturn became the Great Depression and it took another ten years and Japanese bombs falling on Pearl Harbor to put an end to it.
Sound familiar? It should. Because, if you think your taxes are through the roof now, just wait. Someone’s going to have to underwrite the greatest entitlement program in history, and it’s not the down and out indigent this abomination purports to assist. It’s you, Sylvester. So pay up. What better way to reduce an entire population to the status of paupers and place them right in the middle of dependency on government largesse?
Why would this be a good thing, you ask? Simple. Socialism requires a dependent population. And we’re well on our way to it with a multi-generational history of government reliance since 1965. It already is a way of life. Healthcare is the last nail in the coffin, simply because it’s the one service that everyone, everywhere ultimately needs. It is an inelastic service. We depend on the government for welfare, unemployment, child care, education. Now we’ll extend that dependence to our very survival. There will be no area of life in what passes for America that will not be government-influenced, if not controlled outright. And any entrepreneurs out there, who have the audacity, courage, ambition and vision to build something better . . . well, they can empty their wallets, because this latest form of tyranny is going to be built on the back of their necks.
And then there’s immigration reform. Anyone wonder why, all of a sudden, the scepter of border control rears its ugly head as the healthcare debate rages? It’s because the two are joined at the hip. If the current leadership is going to encourage hordes of uneducated laborers to once again come flooding across the border, they’ve got to offer them something to make it worth their while. Universal healthcare is just the ticket. And since American business isn’t going to be making much, considering the confiscatory tax rates soon to be imposed on them, they’ve got to keep the slaves healthy. After all, they have sixty years of cheap labor in front of them. And we’ve all got to invest in this little nugget of subjugation. Future generations of indentured servants demand it, insuring the cycle of tyranny continues in perpetuity.
Student loans come under a similar banner. With government control of all such loans – except banks in whose jurisdictions elected representatives have sold their soul to the devil – do you think higher education just might be restricted to the culturally and politically correct? Considering that practice has been going on for twenty years or so, I’d call it a lead pipe cinch.
And then there’s those pesky baby boomers now entering their golden years with the same sense of entitlement and self-absorption with which they’ve gone through their entire life. The biggest demographic bulge in American history now enters the most expensive season of life with its hand still out. How fitting this group of self-indulgent narcissists gets kicked to the curb at the very moment they’re convinced they’ve earned their season of rest.
There’s a certain symmetry to it. The group that tore down everything their WWII father built – the home, the church, the workplace, the university – gets tossed in the dumpster of history at their moment of maximum arrogance. They demand a level of respect they never offered to anyone let alone earned in their own right, insist upon values they never lived by, and get tossed aside like yesterday’s leftover garbage.
But they’re senior citizens, you say. We’ve always taken care of our senior citizens.
Is that so? Since when? In pre-WWII America, most seniors lived with extended family when they became too infirm to work. But then, that was during the days of the nuclear family. You remember? Mom, Dad, kids at home, and Grandma and Grandpa when they became too sick to take care of themselves. But then, that was during an age of respect, long before the baby boomers threw that practice on the cultural grenade with the supercilious conceit that marked their lives.
Well, here’s a news bulletin, Mr. and Mrs. Boomer – and I count myself among you, to my everlasting shame – a nation that has no respect for life in the womb will have no respect for you when you’ve outlived your usefulness. A group that had contempt for everyone and everything they encountered on the way up with get it in spades when they’re old, decrepit and dependent. And folks, that time has arrived. You’re dispensable, Derek. Get lost. Because you’re a lot more expensive than you’re worth.
Any questions? Just read Peter Singer, or check out the body count racked up under Roe v. Wade. The groundwork has been laid by you, just in time for you to reap the whirlwind. Who said there’s no reckoning for the wicked?
- “But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” – Matthew 19:30.
The singular zeal of the American revolutionaries defied their lack of numbers. The revolt was far from universally supported. But there was the underlying assumption that all freedom comes due in blood. And to their everlasting credit, they were willing to pay that price. It could explain why the spark lit at Concord Bridge set a match to the cultural keg of dynamite that fueled the engine which tamed a continent. And why, as John Kennedy so eloquently put it in his 1960 inaugural, “the glow of that fire can truly light the world.”
But the candle went out on Sunday. It was a noble experiment, but it’s over. Such is the fate of empires, particularly those who do not hold the lonely vigil of keeping their identity alive. So don’t look for such men again. They’ve long since disappeared in the fluffy folds of the nanny state. And now, what remains of a once great nation nestles comfortably in the arms of a system of pseudo-healthcare that is anything but. The time when respect for each and every individual American citizen is over. And the right for them to pursue their dreams is gone.
It’s a sea change moment, the day the last vestige of light went out of the country.
Remember where you were when it happened, who you were with, what you were doing. You lived to see your country disappear. And above all remember one thing.
Remember how nice it was while it lasted.