THE LEGACY OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

As we celebrate the 234th Birthday of America, and the spirit of The Founders who pledged their lives, their fortune and their sacred honor to give America the founding documents: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights....

I think of what President Ronald Reagan said, and how every generation has to fight tyranny:

"Freedom is never more than one generation from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same, or one day, we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

From Human Events, Newt Ginrich writes a beautiful piece on our legacy:

The Legacy of the Declaration of Independence
by Newt Gingrich, June 30, 2010

This Sunday, July 4th, we will once again celebrate our nation's founding, marking the day in 1776 that the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence was intended to be an official statement explaining why the 13 American colonies had declared their independence from Great Britain. In the years following its passage, however, this statement of principles about the rights of man grew to mean much more.

America became the only country in history founded, as Leo Strauss explained, "in explicit opposition to Machiavellian principles," by which he meant crass, power politics. Instead, America was founded on a set of clearly expressed "self-evident" truths. Thomas Jefferson said the Declaration was "intended to be an expression of the American mind," and indeed, no document since has so succinctly and so eloquently spelled out the spirit of America.

Our country has evolved out of the timeless truths expressed in the Declaration of Independence to develop a distinct character and set of values that distinguishes us from even other Western democracies.

This holiday, it is worth taking a look at how several key phrases from the Declaration of Independence have served as definitional statements about the aspirations of America, and how those words of our Founding Fathers' have affected America in the 234 years since they were written.

"...all men are created equal"

The Founding Fathers who authored the Declaration were the first people in the history of the world ever to express our natural equality as a principle of government in such an unqualified way. Though neither the Constitution that followed nor the Founders personally quite fulfilled the promise of those words, it has since been the project of our country to accomplish them.

America came to recognize that though we are not all literally equal -- we are born with different capabilities and attributes, and to different stations in life -- the words of the founders capture the truth that we must treat each other as equals. We are "created equal" in the sense that all men (and, we now recognize, all women) have the same natural rights, granted to them by God. We are all the same under the law.

This powerful statement of universal rights was used by abolitionists as a moral cudgel to rid the United States of slavery, an institution explicitly at odds with the truths expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Abraham Lincoln consistently evoked the phrase in his famous Peoria speech against the Kansas-Nebraska Act and later during the Lincoln-Douglas debates. As President, Lincoln again included the phrase in the Gettysburg Address as the moral underpinning by which the union should be rededicated. Later, during the women's suffrage movement and civil rights struggles of the 1960s, leaders such as Martin Luther King used the powerful phrase as a reminder to America that separate (treating people differently under the law based on their race) was not equal.

Leaders such as Lincoln and King believed that as America's founding political document, the Declaration of Independence is our moral guide with which to interpret the Constitution. They saw that we cannot divorce the law from the moral underpinnings that legitimize it.

But by what authority does that moral underpinning exist?

"...endowed by their Creator"

The core contention of the Declaration of Independence and the principle of natural rights upon which America was founded is that there is a higher moral order upon which the laws of man must be based. The Declaration asserts the existence of "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God," which had a clear meaning in 18th Century England and America. It referred to the will of God as displayed by the natural order of the world.

John Locke, who was widely read by the leaders of colonial America, wrote in his Second Treatise on Government: "Thus the law of nature stands as an eternal rule of all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men's actions, must...be conformable to the law of nature, i.e., to the will of God."

William Blackstone, who was arguably the single greatest influence on the creation of the American legal system, wrote in Commentaries on the Laws of England, "As man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should at all points conform to his maker's will."

America's founding was heavily influenced by the English and Scottish enlightenment, which specifically included a space for God and religion in its conceptions of rights, freedom and human reason. This gave the American Revolution a distinctly different character than the French Revolution, which in its most radical phase sought freedom by casting off all authority and remnants of the existing order -- especially God.

In the American formulation as declared by our founders, man's rights come from God, not from man's ability to "reason" them into existence. Man does not depend on government to grant him rights through a bureaucratic process, but instead to secure those rights that have been granted to him by God.

In other words, power comes from God, to you, which is then loaned to government. Thus, the Declaration states, "That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

The English and Scottish enlightenment's conscious inclusion of a space for God and religion had another key influence on the American system of government. Whereas the French Revolution believed it could create a "new man" through government education and indoctrination, the American Founding Fathers had a profound sense of the fallen nature of man. Thus, they created a system of checks and balances that would serve as a restraint on those in power.

(If you want to learn more, Callista and I have developed a series of books and DVDs to explain the deep faith of the Founding Fathers called Rediscovering God in America.)

"...the pursuit of happiness"

Here again we see the influence of the English and Scottish enlightenment on the Founding Fathers. For writers such as John Locke and Francis Hutcheson, the term "happiness" meant something close to "wisdom and virtue." It did not mean hedonism or other shallow pleasures as the term is too often confused to mean today.

It is also essential to note that the Declaration does not say that we have a right to have happiness provided to us. It says we have the right to pursue happiness - an active verb. As I point out in jest to audiences in my speeches, the Declaration says nothing about a right to redistribution of happiness. It says nothing about happiness stamps. It does not say some people can be too happy and that government should make them less happy out of a sense of fairness.

The Founding Fathers understood that government could not give people happiness, that it was instead up to government to create an environment where the people could best work to achieve their dreams. As AEI's Arthur Brooks has pointed out, polls of wealthy and successful people show that the harder one works for that success, the greater happiness one derives from it.

America is a land where through hard work, determination, and entrepreneurialism, people can achieve their big dreams. The right of "the pursuit of happiness" spelled out in the Declaration is a definitional statement about the nature of America that has attracted people from all over the world to come here to pursue those dreams.

Who We Are This July 4th

A bedrock belief of American conservatism is a respect for the established traditions and values of American culture. Conservatives believe from the time the first colonists landed in Jamestown, America took on a unique culture and set of values that have set us apart from our European cousins: a belief in natural rights, strong religious faith and values, the importance of the work ethic, and a spirit of community that manifests itself in a belief in limited government and strong civic participation. It is this set of beliefs -- truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence -- that have made America so successful, and they deserve to be protected.

The modern Left -- what I describe in my book To Save America as a "secular-socialist machine" -- is using every lever of power at its disposal to dismantle our unique American civilization and replace it with a secular, bureaucratic culture in which government is big, citizens are small, and our rights are defined by the state rather than endowed by our Creator. Equality under the law is being discarded in favor of equality of results; consent of the governed is being subverted by an increasingly overbearing federal bureaucracy and imperial judiciary; and the pursuit of happiness is being undermined by a redistributive welfare state that kills the can-do, entrepreneurial spirit of America.

This July 4th, I hope you will take time to read the Declaration of Independence and consider the truths about our rights and freedoms contained within. I hope you will take time to appreciate the sacrifices made by the founding generation and generations since to secure our liberty.

But most of all, I hope you will take time to appreciate the greatness of America and how hard we must be willing to work to preserve that which makes it so special.

Happy Independence Day.

Your friend,

Newt


P.S. Healthcare Watch: The new healthcare law created a hopeless maze of new bureaucracies and laws that have a timeline for implementation - a timeline almost nobody thinks the government is capable of keeping. One of the first public deadlines to watch for comes this Thursday, July 1 when the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must establish a new insurance web portal through which individuals can identify health coverage options at the state level, including the newly required high-risk pools.

Will they meet this deadline? Visit HealthCare.gov on Thursday morning to find out. And track all future deadlines with the Center for Health Transformation by clicking here.

REMEMBERING THE PROVIDENTIAL GIFT OF AMERICA

As we begin to welcome a new year, with new hope for the future, we also reflect on our lives -- how far we have come, how we survived the year gone by, how to prepare for the next, and the many things for which we are grateful.

When in doubt, lately I get strength in reflecting on our past, and the strength it took our Founding Fathers to fight on, in the darkest of times. What these men and women went through to get us where we are today, can only be imagined, and I thank God every day for their spirit and supreme sacrifice. They have given us a new nation, with new principles - a truly unique gift, a constitutional government. We cannot let them down.

The Heritage Foundation writes a beautiful Christmas piece:


Remembering the Providential Gift of America
December 25, 2009

Christmas, 1776.

Summer had begun with strong declarations of noble ideals, but by winter the cause of liberty seemed to be at low ebb. Having suffered defeat after defeat, many had all but given up hope. It looked like freedom would succumb yet again, as it had throughout history, to the forces of authoritarianism and tyranny.

Then, on Christmas Day, 1776, a small band of colonial forces under the command of Gen. George Washington, having retreated all the way from New York, again crossed the Delaware River and brought battle at Trenton, New Jersey. Washington not only won the battle but regained the initiative and turned the war in the patriots’ favor. One week later, Washington defeated the British at Princeton and forced the enemy to withdraw, preventing its advance on Philadelphia, seat of the Continental Congress.

When it announced itself to the world in 1776, the United States of America was little more than an alliance of 13 small colonies on a barren continent, thousands of miles from their ancestral homeland, surrounded by hostile powers.

Now, well over two centuries after winning independence from the British Empire, America is the freest, wealthiest, most powerful nation on Earth. Along the way it established sovereign nationhood, settled a continent and more and brought unprecedented prosperity to its citizens. It survived a devastating Civil War that threatened its very life, abolished slavery and raised up the emancipated to be citizens equal to their one-time masters. It triumphed in two world wars fought on foreign soil and a decades-long struggle against worldwide communism that, 20 years ago, led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union.

What accounts for this monumental success?

The founding of the United States was indeed revolutionary. But not in the sense of replacing one set of rulers with another, or overthrowing the institutions of society. John Adams queried:

“What do we mean by the American Revolution? The revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people. . . . This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.”

Our revolution was about the ideas upon which a new nation was to be established. Permanent truths “applicable to all men and all times,” as Abraham Lincoln later said, proclaimed that principle rather than will would be the ultimate ground of government.

What is truly revolutionary about America is that, for the first time in history, these universal ideas became the foundation of a system of government and its political culture. Because of these principles, rather than despite them, the American Revolution culminated not in tyranny but a constitutional government that has long endured.

To this day, 233 years after Washington and his men crossed the Delaware, these principles–proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and promulgated by the Constitution–still define us as a nation and inspire us as a people. These principles are responsible for a prosperous, just nation unlike any other. They are the highest achievements of our tradition, a beacon to those who strive for freedom but also a warning to tyrants and despots everywhere. Because of these principles, not despite them, America achieved greatness.

The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson later recorded, was “neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, [but] was intended to be an expression of the American mind.”

As Americans, our aim must be a clear expression and forthright defense of the nation’s principles in the public square so that they become, once again, an expression of the American mind. Despite constant scorn by academic elites, political leaders and the popular media, most Americans still believe in the uniqueness of this country and respect the Founders’ noble ideas. They may fail a test of particulars – quick: when did Washington cross the Delaware? – but they overwhelmingly want to know about this nation and its meaning.

We must give voice to all those who have not given up on their country’s experiment in self-government, have not concluded the cause of liberty and limited constitutional government is lost and have not accepted America’s decline as inevitable.

The goal must be to restore the liberating principles of the American Founding as the defining public philosophy of our nation. As it was for most of American history, so it can be again.

The joy of this wonderful season is about new beginnings and the eternal promise of redemption. We Americans have the immeasurable benefit, the providential gift, of having inherited a great country.

We must never forget its confidence, optimism and promise, its endless capacity for renewal, are contained in our dedication to the enduring principles of liberty with which all men are endowed by their Creator.

May you and yours have a merry and blessed Christmas.

NO, TERM LIMITS IS NOT A FOOL'S ERRAND

When politicians are in office too long, they begin to feel it is their's to keep, to be passed on to their heirs. Louis the XVI and Marie Antoinette don't hold a candle to what's becoming the United States Congress.

These long term politicians are becoming more and more dictatorial, and goodness knows they know better how to run our lives than the citizens. Mark Tapscott writes an excellent piece about this in the Washington Examiner:

No, Term Limits is Not a Fool's Errand
by Mark Tapscott, Editorial Page Editor, November 10, 2009

Somewhere in the liberal print and broadcast media today very important people are using the words “DeMint” and “Coburn” in the same sentence with words like “fools,” “doomed,” or ‘hopeless.” And, as usual, these very important people are wrong.

Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, of course, are the Republican senators from South Carolina and Oklahoma, who today introduced a constitutional amendment providing for a maximum of two six-year terms for members of the Senate and three two-year terms for representatives. Co-sponsors include senators Sam Brownback of Kansas and Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas.

DeMint-Coburn is, uniquely, one of the most radical proposed changes in American politics in decades, and the reestablishment of one of the oldest conservative traditions of the American political culture, with roots deep in the colonial era.

They called it “rotation in office” in colonial days. It was so widely held that nobody batted an eye when Thomas Jefferson proposed term limiting members of the Continental Congress. The limits were needed, Jefferson said, “to prevent every danger which might arise to American freedom by continuing too long in office the members of the Continental Congress."

Americans continued to view rotation in office as self-evidently necessary after the Constitution was adopted, even though the exalted document lacked a term limits provision. Rotation was such a given that it was a commonplace before the Civil War for most members of a new Congress to be freshmen.

No wonder novelist James Fennimore Cooper observed in 1828 that most office-holders held the view that "contact with the affairs of state is one of the most corrupting of the influences to which men are exposed."

It was not until the New Deal era and thereafter that it became routine for congressmen to stay in Washington year after year after year. Today, the re-election rate for the U.S. Congress is typically 90 percent or more, with only a few dozen competitive seats “up” in an election.

Call it what you will, though, term-limiting federal senators and representatives, just as presidents, many state legislators, and city councilmen are, would have a profound effect on American politics. As DeMint said:

"As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to buy off special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship-building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork – in short, amassing their own power.”

The power of congressional incumbency must be broken. If it’s not, there will be no changing the culture of corruption and hypocrisy epitomized by earmarks, Charlie Rangel, trillions in deficits as far as the eye can see, and members voting on 2,000-plus page bills they haven’t read.

That is the reality Tea Party protesters must confront if they want permanent change in America. A 1994 Supreme Court decision saying voters cannot be prevented from voting for whomever they please for Congress has been widely viewed as the final word on term limits.

But it doesn’t have to be the last word. A momentous change has occurred in public opinion in the nearly 10 months since President Obama took office. Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have seriously over-played their hand, thereby inciting a conservative renaissance and a seismic shift to the right among independents.

Hotline editor Amy Walter points to the fact Obama carried independents in Virginia by one point in 2008. A year later, Republican Bob McDonnell carried the same voters by 33 points. In New Jersey, Obama’s four-point margin in 2008 became a 30-point margin for Republican Chris Christie.

There is a growing “throw all the bums out” feeling in this country that threatens career politicians in both parties. The rotting fruits of their tenure are only beginning to stink up the place, and they don’t know how to do anything but make it worse.

Change is coming, and, unlike 1995 and the Contract with America failure, I’m willing to bet that this time around term limits won’t be denied.


Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog on washingtonexaminer.com

DON'T TREAD ON ME!

It's been a long time since many of us had our history lessons, but in light of today's threat of tyranny, a refresher course or two might be handy. Recently, I have read some pretty remarkable writings, which invigorates me to continue the fight to preserve our Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, written by men who had lived under tyranny and knew their history well.

This is a moving piece from Chuck Norris:

Don't Tread on Me!

by Chuck Norris, September 22, 2009

Sept. 12 was an amazing day, as thousands marched on Washington seeking to unite Americans and make a stand against tyranny and oppression. At the same time, the Tea Party Express escorted a number of patriots to the U.S. Capitol to culminate its cross-country rallies.

But what's next? I have an idea.

What I loved about the 9/12 idea is that it was a nonpolitical, nonpartisan movement. The 9-12 Project was designed to bring Americans back to the place where we were Sept. 12, 2001 -- the day after America was attacked by terrorists. We were not concerned then with red states, blue states or political parties. We were united as Americans, standing together to protect our nation.

On Sept. 12, 2001, we sought to protect our nation against terrorists from without. Beginning on Sept. 12, 2009, we are seeking to protect our nation against enemies of our republic from within. Many of us are protesting the present political direction of Washington. Outrageous borrowing, excessive bailouts, massive spending, speedball stimulus plans, universal hell care and swings toward socialism are just a few of the things that were protested that day. Of course, economics is far from America's only problem, as large as it appears to loom.

I want to emphasize: This revolutionary movement is not solely an independent, Republican or Democratic fight. It represents patriots who are fed up against modernists who seek to overturn almost every principle and tenet laid down by our country's Founding Fathers at the inception of our republic. From the East Coast to the "Left Coast," America seems to be moving farther and farther from its Founders' vision and government.

For example, George Washington advised, "The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible." Yet despite presidential campaign promises, we slowly are pulling out of Iraq but are escalating missions in Afghanistan. And the Obama administration also pledged $900 million in U.S. taxpayer-funded aid to Hamas-controlled Gaza and Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority.

On another front, as I've mentioned before, Thomas Jefferson counseled us, "We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." Yet the feds have caused our national deficit and debt to skyrocket by trillions of dollars, and they plan much more fiscal expansion, with seemingly few expectations of resistance. Despite the fact that George Washington admonished us that "to contract new debts is not the way to pay for old ones," we keep borrowing and bailing.

Regarding political accountability, Patrick Henry taught that our "Constitution is ... an instrument for the people to restrain the government." Yet Washington politicians trample that founding document by their actions, bypassing its mandates, spinning its words to justify their choices, abandoning its balance of power, and instead using it to accommodate their own desires, partisan politics and runaway spending.

John Adams declared, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people." Yet we've bastardized the First Amendment, reinterpreted America's religious history, denied our Christian heritage, and secularized our society, and now we ooze skepticism and circumvent religion on every level of public and private life.

And sadly, much of this has escalated in a single year, since our new president took office.

It is no surprise, therefore, that "tea parties" have transformed into town hall revolts, cross-country town criers, 9/12 movements, the Tea Party Express and a proliferation of protests on the Internet. Washington can decry all of these as organized partisan resistance, but the fact of the matter is that everyday common citizens and patriots across this country are fed up with the Fed, and they're not going to take it anymore.

As 9/12 concluded, we all heard many ways to keep this revolutionary movement going. But I was sitting back thinking there's one way we can take a daily stand and declare that as for me and my house, we will serve God and the republic as the Founders did.

If that describes you, then I suggest you fly some revolutionary flag in lieu of your 50-star flag over the next year. Post the 13-star Betsy Ross flag, Navy Jack or Gadsden flag ("Don't Tread on Me") or any representation that tells the story of Old Glory and makes a stand for our Founders' vision of America.

Of course, patriots know that the 50-star flag truly represents one nation under God and our Founders' republic, but modernists simply don't get it. So what do you say we make a statement by flying a different flag and educate our neighbors when they ask us, "Why are you flying that flag instead of the contemporary Stars and Stripes?" (If you insist on posting a modern USA flag, too, then get one that is tea-stained to show your solidarity with our Founders.)

Know a few other patriots? Then please pass along this vintage-flag-posting encouragement to them, as well, and make our Founders proud. And let's remind the U.S. government, "Don't tread on me!"

Is Obamacare Consistent With Our First Principles?

One of the remarkable observations of recent townhall meetings, is the coming together of all walks of life, from young families with children, to beloved war veterans, to senior citizens who have spent a lifetime paying into government, social security and medicare. All of them with one concern -- the intrusion of government in their lives.

The Heritage Foundation articulates:


Is Obamacare Consistent With Our First Principles?
The Heritage Foundation, August 14, 2009

During one of Sen. Arlen Specter’s (D-PA) early health care townhalls in Lebanon, Pennsylvania; mother of two Katy Abrams (http://tinyurl.com/p5nxc2) told the audience: “I don’t believe this is just about health care. It’s not about TARP. It’s not about left and right. This is about the systematic dismantling of this country. I’m only 35 years-old. I’ve never been interested in politics. You have awakened the sleeping giant.” Abrams is dead on. Our federal government has, unfortunately, long been drifting away from the limited government principles first envisioned by our founders. But over the past eleven months, that drift has turned into an all out sprint towards an undemocratic, technocratic, leviathan state … a type of government that our Constitution was specifically designed to prevent.

As Abrams points out, both political parties have been complicit in the rapid deterioration of our founding principles. It was after all President Bush who pushed for and signed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 which created the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). When the Bush administration submitted their legislation to Congress we warned ( http://tinyurl.com/47dwop): “From a constitutional standpoint, the current versions of the legislation are different in scope, and especially in kind, from almost any federal legislation that has come before.” Specifically we identified (http://tinyurl.com/47dwop): (1) Congress’s enumerated power—or lack thereof—to intervene with private markets in the manner contemplated, (2) the lack of meaningful standards to guide the extremely broad grant of discretion to the Treasury secretary (the “legislative delegation” problem), (3) limitations on judicial review over the exercise of that almost limitless discretion, and (4) related separation of powers concerns.

The only thing that truly surprised us after the legislation’s passage was just how quickly our worst fears were realized. The TARP plan, as sold to Congress, was never even implemented (http://tinyurl.com/5p2bjd) and, instead, it quickly devolved into a political slush fund (http://tinyurl.com/5nn2py). Because of the broad delegations of authority in the bill, the American people were left with no real avenue to check the federal government’s unprecedented interference in the U.S. economy. When Members of Congress voted for the bill in October 2008, could any of them honestly say they thought they had just voted to bailout General Motors and Chrysler?

The proposed health care legislation is just as bad, if not worse, than TARP. Sec. 142 of H.R. 3200 grants the new Orwellian titled “Health Choices Commissioner” broad lawmaking authority including the power to set standards for every Americans health insurance plan, to determine which of your current insurance plans do or do not meet that standard, and then to punish plans that do not meet that standard. Even worse is what is not yet in the bill, but is desperately wanted by the Obama administration. A super-empowered Medicare Payment Advisory Commission that is specifically designed to “save money in an apolitical, technocratic way (http://tinyurl.com/orckgw).” The entire purpose of this part of Obamacare would be to take medical decisions away from patients and vest it in a panel of experts specifically designed to be completely unaccountable to the American people. Is this what the Framers of the Constitution had in mind?

When the Constitution was being ratified, James Madison, writing as Publius, sought to allay fears that the new national government would turn into a Leviathan. In the 45th Federalist Paper he emphasized that adoption of the Constitution would create a government of enumerated, and therefore strictly limited, powers. Madison said (http://tinyurl.com/d9grz5): “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined… [and] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce….” Federal tax collectors, Madison assured everyone, “will be principally on the seacoast, and not very numerous.” Exactly six months after publication of this essay, New York became the 11th state to ratify the Constitution. Is turning over one-sixth of our nation’s economy over to Obama’s super-MedPAC panel in any way consistent with this vision?

What Would the Founders Think of ObamaCare?

When you continually take from the well, and give nothing back – the well will run dry. As Margaret Thatcher once said “the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

There’s a lot of buzz in Washington today – will they, before the break, vote on government-run health care or won’t they? While they play games with our lives, I want to share a great piece by Matt Patterson in PajamasMedia on why healthcare is not a right.

I read an American's comment on this, that "This isn't in our Constitution either:

'You have no choice..
You will be told when you can live..
Where you can live..
How you can live..
And how and when you will die..'

The American people are just about ready to make this clear to Obama and Congress."
Thanks, Patriot


What Would the Founders Think of ObamaCare?
The "liberty-mad" rebels would have a tough time understanding how anyone could support the president's health care vision.
July 29, 2009 - by Matt Patterson

Is health care a “right?”

The liberal wing of the Democratic Party has long sought to make it so, and they may be on the verge of achieving their goal. Legislation currently winding its way through Congress would effectively make health care (or more properly, health insurance) open to every American citizen via government subsidized dispensation.

Of course, no such “right” is enumerated in our founding documents — or is it?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. … That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men …

So wrote Thomas Jefferson in the most radical and oft-quoted passage of the Declaration of Independence. An extremely wide reading of these words could conceivably include government-run health care. After all, both “life” and “happiness” are threatened by disease and injury.

(Liberals who would follow down this rhetorical road would do well to tread carefully. The same wide reading of the “life” clause of the Declaration could just as easily be used by conservatives to justify protection of the unborn: if government is justly instituted in part to secure life, then outright abolition of abortion could reasonably be inferred to follow.)

But of course, the founders meant for no such wide-ranging interpretation. Rather, the “life” clause of the Declaration refers to the government’s responsibility simply to not kill its citizens, and to protect them from harming one another. (John Locke certainly inspired Jefferson’s pen with his Second Treatise of Government, where he wrote that “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”) Certainly you will search in vain throughout the Declaration, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the minutes of the Constitutional Convention, and the ratification debates which followed for the argument that government should be responsible for every citizen’s medical care.

Nor is this surprising — the entire raison d’etre of our national existence is the desire for less government in our lives, less taxes and regulation, not more. Let us never forget the glorious antipathy to tax that was the tinder which nourished our revolutionary flame.

Our founders would be astonished to learn that the tax-hating citizens of their limited republic were now on the verge of swallowing the mammoth new tax rates which will be necessary to create a new, government health care regime (but will never be enough to sustain it: per Maggie Thatcher, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.)

Surely this prospect would horrify the men who drafted our founding documents and waged our republican revolution, for a government which controls your medical decisions has power of Orwellian proportions. Barack Obama and his legions in Congress do their best to conceal this (aided, as always, by a pliant press), cleverly framing the issue as one of choice — the government-run option will be just another competitor in the market, they say. Or, as Obama put it, “if you like your health plan, you can keep it.” But this is pure chicanery: government is never just another competitor — it can offer services and goods at far below market value, driving any sensible profit seeker out of the business.

So what will you do when you have no other option? When the government refuses to pay for your dialysis because you are over 65 and it isn’t “cost effective” to keep you alive (as happens in Britain)? Or when you have to wait six weeks for that MRI, never mind your crushing headaches (as happens in Canada)?

Nothing. The government, under the rubric of securing your “life,” has instead gained complete mastery over it. The founders would no doubt observe these monstrous proceedings and wonder what on earth they fought for.

What indeed. In 1775, a British emigrant arriving in Maryland surveyed the fermenting colonial scene and concluded that Americans had gone “liberty-mad.”

The madness, it seems, has subsided.