I often rip stuff out of magazines when I see a passage that catches my eye figuring that even a few words of commenting might get it out of my system. This passage from Robert Moffit’s "At What Cost to Freedom?" in National Review caught my eye back in October (yeah, just going through the pile now):
On “shared responsibility,” the president brooks no dissent. “Unless everybody does their part, many of the insurance reforms we seek — especially requiring insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions — just can’t be achieved,” he said. “That’s why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance.” This requirement is known as the “individual mandate.”
The full speech by President Obama can be seen here.
Now, it may seem to some that Obamacare may now be dead in the water; I’m not convinced that this is so. What bothers me more, however, is the twisting of the language by the President – once more, I see a "hiding" taking place; something that Obama is very good at (e.g., often with his false choice rhetoric).
A responsibility is one that is taken up by an individual on a voluntary basis – if I marry someone, I have the responsibility to uphold those vows; I am responsible for providing and caring for my new family. If I make a promise, I am obligated to make good on that promise. If I tell someone something will be done, I have the responsibility to do it. Family matters are one area that may be external to my making that self-obligation,
Yes, as being part of a society, I am obligated to follow its laws, and certainly Obama is trying to pass this new Leviathan of a law known as "healthcare reform". However, in this case, Obama is trying to use the moral imperative persuasion to conflate the collective need (as he sees it) with the individual sense of responsibility. Forget the argument that most use in saying that this is an unconstitutional mandate – while I agree with that sentiment, it is not the focus of my post. What is the focus is that once again, language is being bent to advance an agenda that really is in direct opposition to that language. In direct opposition to the ideals to which this country was birthed, he places the collective need (in his Progressive eyes) above the freedom of the individual to decide for him or herself to decide whether to select that responsibility for him or herself. He masks the Founders vision of providing for oneself (as being part of the price of freedom is being self-responsible) for the
Sidebar: wanna annoy a Progressive that believes only through Government intervention in all things can each reach true freedom in a Heaven on Earth Utopia? Ask them why, in order to achieve such freedom, why are they so willing to restrict everyone else’s rights to other matters? How does the taking of freedom from one actually give it to someone else?
This Hobbes choice of Big Government, this dereliction of self to the group a la Rousseau (both who demanded a Leviathan of a large centralized government who would then dole out Rights, favors, and needs), by Obama is the end game of the Progressives.
As with Mike Kitch of the Laconia Daily Sun (who seemingly is a devotee of both Hobbes and Rousseau and is of the persuasion that America is bad from the beginning when he is wont to rant or deigns to speak to me on Big Government or in leaving a comment here from time to time), he basically believes that no good can ever come from the rugged individualism and expression of self-governance. Indeed, for Progressives, when bad things happen, it is never the fault of Big Government, thus the charge of a loss of individual freedom or of local self-government is nothing more than caterwauling by the likes of me and other Conservatives and Libertarians.
Unless, of course, the Party in Power happens to be the Republicans……
