Move Toward the Light
The furor this week is all about healthcare. President Obama had the temerity to make his case before a joint session of congress which certainly served to fan the flames of a debate that was settling down to just embers. Of course, having no one better to talk this over with than God, I did just that.
Most of the objection to a national health care system seems to boil down to one of three roots. The first is that people don’t like taxes so they don’t want the government to do anything that requires them to be taxed. This is something that the rich white folks who run the Republican party have done a good job of pushing. Everybody wants more money than they have, with the possible exception of Warren Buffet, so it resonates with just about everyone. Now they manage to gloss over the part where the only ones they ever seem to get around to really lowering taxes for are the really, really, well off, but hey, who else really matters? I just keep in mind that the only thing that ever trickled down on me, economically speaking, had a distinct whiff of urine to it.
The second root, is the notion that government never does anything well. The Republicans have done a good job of making sure this resonates as well. Every time they get into power, they get right to work doing everything they can to sabotage the government, so it ends up looking pretty inept. God tells me that if we want government to work well, we should probably elect people that think it can work well, not people that are convinced it can’t. I mean think about it, if you put someone in charge of something that they think is a bad idea, how well are they likely to do?
The other argument I’ve heard is that the constitution doesn’t enumerate any power that legitimately gives them the right to legislate health care. They’re probably right, on a technical level, but since it says right in the preamble that one of the main reasons to have a government is “to promote the general welfare,” I can’t see as national health care really goes against the spirit of the document.
So what does God think? Did she tell me that if she wanted us to be healthy she would have given us immune systems? Did she say that the biggest form of waste in the whole health care system is the profits of insurance companies?
Actually she just told me that it was kind of sad how few people really get the notion of enlightened self-interest. When I asked what she meant by that, she just told me that it wasn’t her job to enlighten me.
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