Column for Sept. 24, 2009

The whole country is still abuzz over the proposed health care reform bill before Congress. The gigantic bill that has not been read by most of the Congress and is being pushed heavily, including by our own Congressman, Bob Etheridge, is seeing various proposed amendments and proposals come forth. Just recently, it was proposed that insurance coverage be procured by every individual in the nation or face a $3800 fine by the government.

I had a sad but interesting conversation with someone I had not seen in over twenty-five years. He thought it was horrible that in a civilized nation such as ours, we do not consider health care to be a basic human right. He further went on to deride health insurance companies for rapacious profits. For those who do not know what rapacious means, the adjective is defined as "taking by force; plundering; greedy; ravenous".

I simply said that I do not see in the Constitution where the federal government is allowed to provide a health care system. I was informed that he was not an originalist, which is a euphemism for being one who is either too intellectually lazy or non-caring to believe that words mean things and that we have a supreme law to follow. Rather, he believes that we can bend the Constitution to mean whatever we want or ignore it completely.

I found his term rapacious interesting, since the definition surely fits the federal government better than it does the free market system. We have the "War on Poverty" that transfers trillions of dollars from taxpayers to leaches. Social Security is broke after almost 75 years. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went broke and cost us taxpayers billions in bail-outs later. Medicaid and Medicare are broke. The Post Office is perpetually broke. The so-called "stimulus" spending gave us all time high debt and spending to no real avail. The so-called "Cash for Clunkers" program went broke in just a few weeks, burning through $3 billion. Now people want to trust the same government bureaucratic system to handle one of the largest sections of our economy?

While my old acquaintance is a self-proclaimed non-originalist, I am one to go to the original documents and opinions of the ones who wrote the Constitution. James Madison, arguably the most influential man in the writing of the document, wrote in The Federalist Papers # 45 the following. "We have heard of the impious doctrine in the Old World, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the New, in another shape that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form?" Basically he asks "does the government serves the people or do the people serve the government?" If you believe that the people serve the government, then you believe we should all line up, turn over our hard earned money to them, and allow those all wise, all knowing masters to redistribute our wealth as they see fit.

Madison further wrote in that same letter, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined…[to] be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected." I do not see health care as one of the few and defined powers in the Constitution. Madison wrote much of the document. Who are we to argue with him?

I will quote myself from my own short, well-received Twitter commentary. "Nobody should feel entitled to my money to pay for their health care nor empowered to tell me what sort of health care to provide myself."

If you robbed me at gunpoint to get money to pay for your insurance coverage, you would go to jail. If you and millions of others get the government to do it on your behalf, it is considered legal and yet is no more ethical.

This old acquaintance, that is admittedly a heathen, even tried to cite Jesus' admonition to do unto others and to care for the poor to support his desire for a public health care system. I would simply cite the 8th Commandment, "Thou shalt not steal."

Just because there is a majority consensus to forcibly, rapaciously steal from the majority and give it to the minority does not make the theft ethical or even Constitutional. You can apply the principle of that last sentence to many government actions at all levels. A right is not a right if the government has to steal from other people to provide it.