Government health care collides with freedom

The political debate raging in Congress over President Obama’s push to fundamentally change America’s health care system into a centrally planned model needs to be framed around the larger question of what is government’s role in society?

Our Founding Fathers studied centuries of philosophical and theological writings on the issue, debated it spiritedly, and for the first time in human history came decidedly down on the side of the free individual. The results of the U.S. Constitution they handed down to us have been nothing short of miraculous. In the human experiment of government, nothing has increased mankind’s wellbeing faster or farther than forming a government around the self-determination of the individual.

So what is government’s role in society? Government’s job is to protect and defend the individual’s right to live a free and full life.

The debate over the government takeover of health care has been recently reignited with the House of Representatives passing a bill that increases the federal debt limit while simultaneously defunding Obamacare. Before the Senate could send the bill back to the House with health care funding fully restored, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas briefly pulled hard on the handbrake of the government growth train, which erupted in a shower of sparks with the longest filibuster in recorded Senate history.

Most Americans now believe the government takeover of health care is careening off the tracks toward a cataclysm. Even one of its chief architects — Democrat Sen. Max Baucus from Montana, called it a train wreck. If adopted, it will accomplish the three Rs of a government takeover: regulation, rationing and removal of individual freedom of choice.

It is the removal of freedom of choice element that constitutes the greatest evil to our republic. The removal of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness from the individual for the greater good is the backbone of Marxism-Leninism. I fear that our march toward this enticing academic world view will have the same results here as in other nations of the world that have tried it. It has all but bankrupted most of Europe. In extreme cases — places like the former Soviet Union, North Korea, and Cuba — they have permanently extinguished the lights of tens of millions of people in order to further the aims of utopian state planners. These countries operate under the vision that the good of the whole is greater than the freedom of the individual.

It’s time to halt this fundamental change of America from a country maintained for free individuals to a centrally planned government. Everywhere one looks, one sees the steady growth of the federal government into virtually every sector of society, the militarization of federal bureaucracy and the widespread spying on our own people. These are hallmarks of Marxist-Leninist governments. All of this is completely contrary to the design of our Founding Fathers who feared a big government snatching away the people’s freedoms above all else when they set up constitutional checks and balances and state’s rights so as to prevent the federal government from becoming the master of American citizens as opposed to a servant of a free people.

As you ponder this, imagine if George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were alive today and members of the U.S. Congress.

Also imagine if Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro were also members. How do you think they would vote on the government takeover of health care? You be the judge.

American should have a government that is by the people and for the people, not a government that is above the people to rule the people. In the U.S., the freedom of the individual remains sacred. Freedom is not just in our DNA. It is our DNA.

Daniel Hamm lives in Palmer.