Chief’s Reply

• “wrong side of history” Hmmm. Sorry, I don’t accept Marxist historical determinism as being a valid theory, but you’re free to think whatever you like.
• “common sense” dictates that there just flat out isn’t enough money to pay for all this in spite of the common non-sense like the garbage-in-garbage-out CBO reports (replete with double counting errors, incomplete information, etc.).
• “compassion”? Hmmm. Excuse my personal views here…I believe that Christ did command all to aid the poor (even as he stated that “the poor are always with us”.) This does NOT mean giving everyone or anyone whatever they think they want or need. Again, the common sense point noted above comes into play, as does the undesirability of “enabling” self-destructive behaviors. By the way, there ARE a number of reforms that could have been applied that really would have made real improvements, without setting up the socialization of the system.

To repeat for emphasis, we do have PERSONAL responsibility to be charitable under Christ’s teaching and example. HOWEVER…this does not morally justify me in walking up to you on the street with my gun, taking your money, and then turning around and using it to meet the demands of aiding someone I think is in need. This act is not morally improved if I get a friend to join in to help me in this activity, either.

By logical extension, neither can this be morally justified if I round up, say 90 million or so of my closest friends, form a political party, and then use the guns of the state’s police power to do the same thing on a larger scale: individually immoral acts do not somehow become moral when committed by a group. If they were, virtually anything, up to and beyond the holocaust or GULAGs could logically be justified on the basis of group dynamics alone – something like say, a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, or some similar concept…of course all in the name of a theoretical “collective good”.

Of course if you don’t accept a morality founded in “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” as stated in the Declaration of Independence, then I guess you could come up with rationalization for about anything, as noted above. Historical determinism does this quite easily: “if it can be done, and it is done, then by definition it’s justified.” I don’t buy that!

Finally, as noted in my posting immediately after this one, there is a lack of Constitutional authority for this. Remember, the Constitution is designed deliberately to STOP government from being intrusive. Even B.O., the anointed one himself has noted this (with disapproval) in his previous academic incarnation.

Finally, this particular legislative monstrosity (Obamacare) can’t even muster a majority of popular support…but in the best Progressive tradition, the governmental elite experts (whether elected, selected, or entrenched in the bureaucracy) are assumed to know better than the people what is best for each individual, and it’s our place to be loyal members of the collective, and fall into line.

Sorry. That’s not for me! To quote a line from the movie Serenity: “I intend to misbehave!”