Certainly, here in NH, one cannot talk about the NH Prez Primary without mentioning part time NH resident and former MA Gov, Mitt Romney. He had the baggage in the last Primary of flip-flopping (a la the other well known MA politician: US Senator John Kerry (D-MA), AKA, "LiveShot", or "Lurch"). I will say that he had unneeded and absolutely unwarranted potshots concerning his religious affiliation that played a role in his failed campaign last go around.
However, the next problem he will have to surmount is one at which he worked hard and long at and has tried to take credit for numerous times; this phrase caught my eye:
“It’s a personal responsibility principle,’’ Romney maintained, arguing over and over that an individual mandate was the only alternative to letting uninsured “free riders’’ show up at hospital emergency rooms and get medical care at public expense. In 2006, as he was gearing up for a presidential run, Romney called it “the Republican approach’’ to say: “Everybody should have insurance. They should pay what they can afford to pay. If they need help, we will be there to help them, but no more free ride.’’
Sure, the governmental situation is different from Obamacare – at the Federal level, massive barrages of verbiage and rhetoric (not to say, time, effort, and money) are being leveled each side concerning the Individual Mandate being Constitutional or not; there is no such limitation from a Constitutional mandate (or lack thereof) at the State level such as there is in Massachuesetts.
In my opinion (such as it is), I tend to look at this as an incursion upon my free will to decide what is best for me – my choice, not a demand of and by government simply because it MAY be good for me. Simply put…
… this is a tax on breathing placed upon me not by the powers of the Constitution but by promoters of "the collective" (yes, socialism) that believe that the sum of society, the needs of that sum, outweighs the freedom of the individual. Sure, it may be a personal responsibility, as Romney puts it – but the scope of that personal responsibility has shamefully been stretched one way – you WILL be responsible to the collective, for the sake of the collective, and the actual personal responsibility level is reduced. Why not think that way, when the message is from the Obama Administration, the Progressives, and the Social Services-industrial complex is: "don’t worry, we’ll take care of you".
Bottom line – if it IS a personal responsibility, call it that – YOUR personal responsibility. MY personal responsibility. This is part of what this past election just said – more of a sense of individual responsibility. But like it or not, responsibility is an individual voluntary action – I can choose to be "responsible" or not – or, I used to be able to make that choice. If I chose to not be responsible, then I used to suffer the consequence of my own making. Now, in the case of universal healthcare, Obamacare, the only consequence I will suffer is an IRS agent knocking on my door if I do not fulfill my personal responsibility to society. Such a definition…
Progressives have changed the culture in two ways in this area. First, they have persuaded us that which used to be a voluntary and individual act – charity – is now the domain of "the collective". They have changed the definition that held sway for hundreds and thousands of years that charity comes from one person, from one family, to another individual or family to that being that society as a whole (think: government). They made it mandatory, under the guise of "we are a rich nation" that government should first, pick up the cost of care, and secondarily (once established), make it mandatory. What went undiscussed appropriately, again in my opinion, was the the appropriation of other peoples’ wealth to accomplish this.
So, we have a pincer movement from both below and from above. For a concrete example, think a mandatory helmet law. It seems every year, we see the Federal Government make the play for NH to change its laws with the carrot of "more money for you!" (last year, it worked out to be about $3 / resident). The political argument FOR mandatory helmets is that because we, as a society, have to pay the bill for the resulting head injuries to riders without helmets, we should have the right to mandate the wearing of helments.
See – because we have mandated that society has to care for you, society has the right to restrict your economic freedom to pay for our kindness, our charity, to some one else (since you have less $$ in your wallet, your freedom to make choices is diminished). The pincer: the bottom is that we mandate the care, the top is that you lose your freedom to decide to offer, or not, charity to the down rider. Result – you’re skewered both ways – we lose our money and we lose our freedom. Because the collective is ALWAYS more valuable than the individual.
The Founders are spinning in their graves faster than a Vegas chip counter…
Now expand this out to universal healthcare – it is the same writ large. Same pincers exist – just larger in cost and larger in effect on freedom. But without that Individual Mandate (or "personal responsibility"), the top pincer, the bottom pincer cannot be applied. Dr. Walter Williams has it exactly right – this whole thing is simply a failure of socialism applied small in the US.
And all of this will be applied to Mitt – and in the rise of the TEA Party this cycle, Mitt cannot escape this close comparison. It may not matter what his successes may have been, his personality, his fortune, or anything else. When people look at Mitt, along side him will be the negatives of Obamacare and Romneycare staring him in the face.
And at the ballot box.
