Sometimes my government scares me. One would think that some of the things that were said in the Stat of the Union address were universally accepted, yet too often I saw "the other side" sitting stoically by while the rest stood in applause.
Two were striking to me. The first was when the president said that it's best to trust the people with their money. It's best to keep taxes low. It's best not to take more money from Americans. One side rose and applauded; the other side stayed seated. What am I to conclude? "No, we don't think Americans should keep their money. We think that we should take their money from them and spend it as we see fit. Oh, we'll do it in ways that we think are best for them ... but we don't intend to let them keep it. Taking their money and spending it is our job."
I wasn't the least bit surprised when the president urged that health care reform leave health care in the private sector rather than government control, and the likes of Obama refused to respond. Of course he plans to fix our health care problems. He and those like him plant to do it by taking our money and taking over the health care system of America. We don't know what we're doing. The health care system isn't doing its job. Who better to fix it than the government? No surprise there.
The other one that was striking, though, was when President Bush spoke of how adult skin cells had been modified to act as embryonic stem cells. The president spoke of the need to make medical advances to save lives while respecting life and moral values. The Republican side stood and applauded, and the Democrat side sat silent. What can I conclude? "No, we don't care about moral values. We don't need to respect life."
Maybe my assumptions are wrong. Maybe the majority factor of my government isn't intending to take away my money at higher rates. Maybe they don't plan to increase my taxes. Maybe they don't think that it's better to take control of the health care system than it is to assist the market in managing it. Maybe they really do care about life and morality. Maybe. But I'm afraid that there are too many -- some of them are running for president -- who are of the opinion that government is the answer and we need to set aside our life, our liberty, our freedoms for their better interests.
2 comments:
They are caught in a trap on embryonic stem cell research. To acknowledge that destruction of embryos is a moral issue - e.g. something bad - is to oppose their chosen philosophy on what they call 'choice'. It is simply logical - in order for abortion to be justified, an embryo can have no inherent worth - therefore anyone suggesting anything that might in any way reduce the number of embryos destroyed would be silly at best - and anti-freedom at worst.
See this is an issue on which they cannot think - there are several similar - and it is why leaders in mainline churches find themselves supporting things like partial birth abortion when extremely large majorities of their members do not.
Oh, socialised medicine isn't all bad... here in the UK we have free health care for all funded from general taxation. Although it provides an excellent standard of care, we spend a significantly lower sum per head of population on health than the US, for arguably better outcomes. In other words we're better off paying taxes for health than private insurance, because (i) it's cheaper (ii) we have control over it's masters via the ballot box.
(oh, and market mechanisms are harnassed in order to make the state system more efficient - the two worlds are not mutually exclusive)
I'm not saying that importing our model to the USA would work (as neither would the vice versa), and there are many differet models working in places as far flung as Australasia, and Scandanavia.
What does perplex people in such places is why the USA's collective wealth provides so little in health care for its poorest citizens, in comparison with other developed nations.
My time studying in the States made me conclude that the answer was essentially cultural, and the very strongly individualistic assumptions of most Americans. That a health system develops in that shape from those assumptions is fair enough. What I never understood however was that many American Christians I met argued fervently that the NHS we have in the UK is "unchristian".
Such a critique seemed to me to be the outworking of the old cliche about trying to cast God in our own image and project our own social assumptions onto Him. In the UK the NHS was to a great extent the achievement of Christian politicians and medics!
As for me - I am happier to pay the high taxes we endure here, but to enjoy complete health care for life, for all. And after 50 years of it operating here, when a politicians lauds the NHS's achievements - the applause is virtually unanimous!
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