Thoughts on limited government (which isn’t about the size of government).
28 thoughts on “Whatever Happened To The Constitution?”
As a foreigner it seems to me that Americans have a very ambivalent attitude towards their constitution. On the one hand they revere it almost as holy writ, but in practice their leaders seem to ignore large sections of it, or reinterpret them as convenient.
Yep, that’s pretty much it, MPM.
It’s a sacred relic, M. We take it out, dust it off, and display it proudly from time to time.
But in seriousness, and in fairness, violent disagreements about its meaning, and one party trying to seize the central power for its own purposes, is nothing new at all. Jefferson despaired of the Republic in the 1820s, as did the Federalists when the Jacksonians wiped them out in that decade. The Civil War certainly put a big crack in it, it seems. Progressivism and that evil gnome FDR were dire threats in their day.
To some extent, we seem to have muddled by on Madison’s genius: that republics do, indeed, collapse into a welter of grabbing for the unlimited Imperial power of the People, accompanied by bread ‘n’ circuses and paying off the Praetorians — except (he thought) if they are big enough, and by “big” he meant polyglot, stuffed full of passionately opposed and competing interest groups. The existence of such competing, mutually suspicious, ideological diversity would guarantee, over the long run, that a coalition majority would always cobble itself together to resist the worst predations of any ambitious minority, and would use the principles in the Constitution as a stick to beat them off.
Generally, he seems to have been right. Lately — I wonder. Perhaps we have become too connected, too uniform, and we no longer benefit from such a wide ideological spectrum. I blame Al Gore and the Internet.
If it was *just* the leaders who were selective in their support for the constitution, it would be one thing…
~Jon
If Obamacare is constitutional, we have experienced the demise of limited government.
This is how far off we are. The demise of limited government has been an ongoing thing for decades. To say Obamacare would define it is to diminish that fact. It’s no joke when they said, “If the Iraquis need a constitution, give them ours, we aren’t using it.”
Why bother with an amendment process when you can just ignore the constitution and make things up as you see fit? The Sotomayor confirmation was bad, but the Kagan confirmation almost caused me to loose all hope. If our leaders don’t understand the constitution and it’s limit on government power where can we turn? If the tea party could understand and explain the issue and ‘we the people’ understood it, elections should be a slam dunk. But they and they don’t.
This issue is simple and should be crystal clear. You said it yourself and even the good guys representing the issue are getting it wrong. The limit on government isn’t about it’s size, it’s about its power (although size contributes to its abuse of power.)
At least for the 20th and 21st centuries, having the US government actually follow the Constitution is like the quip that “Christianity has never been tried.” The government gives lip service to the Constitution, all elected officials swear an oath to uphold it, and then they go and do whatever the hell they want.
I think our founders may have missed this. They should have included an impeachment board with each state choosing one member. Anyone in any branch of government that goes out of bounds regarding the constitutional enumeration of powers gets a public hearing. If they can’t defend their actions using the constitution they are immediately impeached, no appeal. Kagan would last one day longer than her first bad ruling.
ken, the solution is never yet another Star Chamber, Czar, or other source of Ultimate Corrective Power. Keep in mind the Greeks and Romans used to appoint a “dictator” or “imperator” (literally, giver of commands) with power over the usual democratic governing councils to “straighten things out” when they felt the governing process had gone amiss.
We know how that worked out: Caesar, imperial exhaustion, a thousand years of Dark Ages. This is not the right path.
I know you’re right Carl. The founders were relying on an educated public and a media with integrity. Both seem in the minority.
It seems America has battered wife syndrome. We should all be outraged by our governments trampling on rights that can never be waived. We in general are not. If you are, you’re considered a wacko crackpot.
We have a long way to go.
“If our leaders don’t understand the constitution and it’s limit on government power where can we turn?”
There’s the problem. Stop thinking of them and speaking of them as your “leaders”. They are not. They are your representatives — they work for you in the distasteful task of government, a job too dirty for Mike Rowe. Remember that, and whenever you see someone else make the same error, correct them and ask them to do the same in the future. It is a meme that needs to spread. Be sure to remember it at the ballot box.
Yeah I forgot the scare quotes. ‘public servant’ seems like they mock us with it.
Ed I will do that. You have me on board.
I think our history has shown that the checks placed on federal power weren’t entirely adequate–not over the long term, anyway. Maybe adding another branch, re-empowering the states, adding term limits/recall, and/or some other structural change would help to fix things.
End of the day, though, until Americans as a whole return to a general belief that limited government is the safest and best course, we’re fighting a losing battle.
I think our history has shown that the checks placed on federal power weren’t entirely adequate–not over the long term, anyway.
They were adequate enough to prevent the federal branches from trespassing upon each other’s portfolio, but it did not prevent them (esp. the Congress) from intruding on the powers reserved to the states or people — if all 3 branches conspire against you, you’re screwed.
Nothing happened to the Constitution. What happened is that society got more complicated. We’re not a collection of farmers, scattered thinly along coastal states, out plowing the North 40 on the south end of a north-bound mule. Now that we’re an urban and mechanized society of 300 million, problems that were literally inconceivable 200 years ago need to be addressed.
Fortunately, most of the constitution is not a prescription of what we will or won’t do. Rather, it’s a prescription of how to make the decision as to what we will or won’t do.
Ken, a much better view of civil servants and politicians at all levels is as: “Servants of the Public”. There are subtle differences in meaning that place the onus on us – the public – to ascertain that our servants are actually serving us; the public at large!
Sack ’em all and no references!
Chris: That’s all fine and dandy, but a lot of our gripes revolve around the fact that we’re not using the Constitution to make those decisions.
It took a Constitutional Amendment to introduce an income tax, to alter the balance of power between the federal government and the states in specific ways (direct election of senators, national voting standards for age and gender, etc.), to end the practice of slavery by individual citizens, or even to make illegal the manufacture and sale of a specific product.
And yet, a simple decree by the President, a judge, or, most common of all these days, an unelected and largely unknown mandarin bureaucrat, is all that it takes to bring forth new law, even from whole cloth, even if it directly contradicts the Constitution and its Amendments. We might as well bring back formal hereditary positions and titles of nobility, while we’re at it.
Brilliant comment, Ed! I shall remember it.
Now that we’re an urban and mechanized society of 300 million, problems that were literally inconceivable 200 years ago need to be addressed.
Yeah? Name one. This is one of the more brain-dead memes I’ve ever heard statists advance. As if human nature had become totally different in the last 200 years — or plain thinking moral principles had become “outdated” by the Internet. Feh.
Carl Pham – providing health care for all was not conceived of by the Founding Fathers because all health care sucked. Since the Founders didn’t object to slavery, civil rights for black wasn’t conceived of.
A large standing military fighting overseas was conceived of, but explicitly rejected.
Don’t be ridiculous, Chris. There is no chance whatsoever that Madison and Jefferson looked around them and said Gee, our health care sucks! On the contrary, Jefferson in particular believed he lived in an age of discovery and miracle science, and he would have forcefully argued to you that his medical care was light-years ahead of that up with which the poor slobs 200 years earlier had to put.
And I’m equally sure that your descendants, if any, in 2210 will laugh at how sucky your health care is now. Either way, I am perfectly sure the Founders understood the nature of changing technology — and felt quite correctly that it had exactly zero to do with the good government of men.
For example, they would have been appalled at the monumental stupidity and potentiality for corruption (both venial and political) extant in a proposal that men should pay for their health care by having a big chunk of their earnings taxed away, and then having it given back to them according to some scheme satisfactory to the party in power at that time in Congress. That would’ve made as much sense as everyone voluntarily becoming slaves: people whose labor belonged entirely to some master, who would then dole out living quarters, food, and clothing as he saw fit.
A large standing military fighting overseas was conceived of, but explicitly rejected
In what sense? It was rejected at the time as unnecessary and undesirable, but of course they left open the possibility in the Constitution that, at some point, it might become both. Had they truly felt it was always a bad idea, they would have ruled it out, or put big roadblocks in its path, when they wrote the Constitution. They did no such thing.
I’ve never heard any reasonable argument that the principles as old as classical Greece — the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the obligation of government to govern with the consent of the governed, or any such thing — must be different in a nation of plowmen than they are in a nation of Twittering office drones. If you think you’ve got one, let’s hear it.
I’ve never heard any reasonable argument that the principles as old as classical Greece — the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the obligation of government to govern with the consent of the governed, None of these principles have been violated. You don’t like health care? Get enough Congressmen and Senators elected to repeal it.
You don’t like health care? Get enough Congressmen…
Already done!
…and Senators elected to repeal it.
Coming up, in 2012!
And when it happens, will you sit back and accept the will of the majority? Or grumble and gripe about how “fundamental rights” like health care shouldn’t be subject to the whims of the mob?
Health care is not a fundamental right. It’s something we should provide to all, but it is not a right.
Is that so? And how do you propose “providing” it to all without violating some of the existing rights — like the right of some men to their liberty? To the fruits of their labor? To make contracts with whomever they please? To be just as stupid as they like — smoke, eat too much, skydive, fail to buy health insurance — so long as they do not infringe on the rights of others?
You can’t get your goodies unless you seriously overrun those very well-established rights. That’s why people have argued “decent health care” is a “right” — because only then, if it’s a co-equal right, can you justify the infringement of other, pre-existing rights. If it’s not a right, then things that are rights take clear precedence, and your goal cannot be reached.
Post-script: also, let me point something else out: we already “provide” health care for all. No one is turned away by doctors or hospitals because he’s the wrong race, the wrong social class, not a member of the Ruling Party.
What you want is for their to be no obligation to pay for your medical care. For you, the patient, to have the right to command someone else to cover its cost — either the doctor works for free, donating his labor to you, or some other schmo has to work twice as hard, to pay for his own medical care and yours, whether he wants to or not, whether it severely harms his own fortunes and family or not.
I don’t see why you don’t equally well think that if I need a blood transfusion or organ donation, I should have the “right” to go out into the street and round up the first suitable donor I find and force him (with the assistance of the sheriff’s deputies) to give me what I need. Society should provide me with health care!
Carl Pham: Everybody is going to need health care at some point in their lives. What I want is for everybody to pay into the system. Currently, the uninsured don’t, so when they go to the emergency room, they get poor care (no long-term follow up, etc.) at high cost, and all on my (insured) bill.
What the rest of the world does is that one pays in, via taxes or mandatory insurance, and one gets covered. Since no other free-world country has banned cheeseburgers or made doctors work for free, I see no reason for that to happen in the USA.
I refer you to comments made in a previous thread – when I say “2 + 2 =4” that’s what I mean. Please don’t try and argue I said “2 + 2 = 17.” It makes you look stupid and pisses me off.
So, you want everybody to pay into the “system”… whereupon “somebody” will get to determine how “best” to “distribute” it.
Riiiight.
And, going back to the actual topic, which you so neatly diverted the conversation from… where in the Constitution (y’know, the law of the land) is the federal government given the authority and power to create this system or appoint the “somebody” in the first place?
Again, the Constitution provides a mechanism by which this all can be done within its limits (i.e., legally!), specifically by outright changing the text of the Constitution itself. To steal from Wilford Brimley, “Wonderful thing, an Amendment.” You can do anything to the Constitution with one. Hereditary titles of nobility? Sure! Dictatorship for life? No problem! Universal health care? You bet! The possibilities are endless. All you need is enough votes in Congress and enough state legislatures, one time.
The catch is, a lot of folks think that’s too much trouble to go through these days. It’s so haaaaaard to get an Amendment passed, and it’s so much easier just to get 5 justices to find an emanation of a penumbra, or just flat-out enact things by decree. Who needs the Constitution, anyways? It’s old, and it was written by a bunch of old white guys… some of whom owned slaves!
Everybody is going to need health care at some point in their lives. What I want is for everybody to pay into the system.
Chris, everyone needs food, shelter, clothes. Do you see a need for everyone to pay the government their earnings, and for government then to distribute those things? If so, then as I said, you just want us all to be happy little slaves, our labor owned by government, and our living given to us by it. Not for me, thanks.
If not — what’s so damn special about doctor bills? Why do you propose this gigantic Rube Goldberg device of paying cash into the Treasury (with a bit skimmed off the top to pay for accountants and lawyers to see the paperwork is filed properly), and then having the money go out of the Treasury to pay for medical care (with a bit more skimmed off the top, and plenty of opportunities both coming and going for graft, corruption, and influence peddling)?
Pleeeeez don’t trot out that madness of the fact that sometimes you get hit with more medical bills in a year than your salary or savings can cover. For God’s sake, people buy houses, you know, and houses typically cost 3 to 5 times an annual salary. People also cope with their house burning down by accident, too. Or car accidents in which two victims end up paraplegic and you’re on the hook for $1 million in medical costs. This is what the entire private financial market is for — this is why you buy insurance, why the credit markets exist, et cetera and so forth.
I suppose you may then argue that this is all different, morally, because…well, why? What’s so morally different about asking a man to X-ray your chest and tell you whether you have operable lung cancer, and another man to cut it out, compared to asking a man to rebuild your house if a lightning strike burns it down, or a man to pay you enough to buy groceries and cover your rent if you’re injured on the job and can’t work? The consequences are no less serious and life-altering. The fact that you’re asking for someone else’s skilled labor, the sale of which is the only way he can pay his bills, isn’t different.
Yes, it’s a cruel world, reality, where if you are stupid or shiftless you may well go hungry, do without material goods, or even die younger than you could. So? This is why we work, isn’t it? This is the difference between this mortal vale o’ tears and Eden, or between being an adult, with adult responsibilities, and being a child who counts on Mom and Dad to take ultimate responsibility.
Currently, the uninsured don’t, so when they go to the emergency room, they get poor care (no long-term follow up, etc.) at high cost, and all on my (insured) bill.
All urban myths. First, “follow up care” and its cousin “preventative care” both increase overall healthcare expenses. (They make life much more comfortable, and are well worth the expense, mind you. But they don’t reduce total costs.) Secondly, the burdens of the costs of treating uninsured people who (1) earn too much to qualify for Medicaid and other such charity programs but (2) foolishly don’t carry insurance and (3) don’t pay their bills and (4) don’t have enough moveable assets or wages to be recovered by the usual legal means are small. And if that worries you, you can repeal the “patient dumping” laws and let the threat of getting lower class treatment induce people to pay for the damn insurance or sign up for Medicaid as they should.
What the rest of the world does is that one pays in, via taxes or mandatory insurance, and one gets covered.
What you mean by “rest of the world” is most of Europe, Canada, et cetera. But, in addition to the fact that, as your mother told you, the fact that everyone else jumps off a cliff is no reason to do so yourself, these systems are all coming unglued. The NHS in England is forced to hire medical workers from the former Empire, because they can’t pay enough to hire English men and women. Let’s not get into the horrors of the “Liverpool path.” Europe has survival rates for serious diseases requiring long term follow-up care, like heart disease and cancer, that are substantially poorer than the US. In Canada there are painful shortages of primary OB/GYN docs for deliveries. Wealthy Tasha Richardson dies in a skiing accident nearly identical to one that my daughter readily survived 8 years ago — because her family didn’t have the same option I had, which is to pay a helicopter pilot $2500 to fly her to a hospital.
In short, unsurprisingly, when you construct a giant inefficient centrally-driven mechanism to do what is better done in a distributed-intelligence “grassroots” multi-centered efficient mechanism, the results are noticeably poorer. Why on Earth would any sane person wish it? Or any experienced person be surprised by it? Supposed the CEO of the firm for which you work came and said hey Chris, we’ve got a new idea, where instead of paying you your entire wages, we are going to keep back 40% of them, what our average employee spends on housing. Then they company will rent houses and apartments, and you’ll be assigned to one. Sound good to you? Why would you insist on choice and freedom when it comes to your residence, the car you buy or don’t buy — even what kind of cell phone service you buy — but not in the most important decisions you’ll ever make: what kind of medical care to buy?
None of these principles have been violated.
This is a completely false statement that invalidates any argument that follows. If you can’t get this correct (the premise) it’s hopeless. The principle that you and all other people as well have the unwaverable, inviolable, total and absolute right to use, control and/or dispose of whatever you possess without taking that same right from others except where both/all parties agree is a first principle. Every argument you make violates it. You completely ignore it in order to make your invalid argument.
This is so absolutely basic that it suggests the fools are those that would continue to argue the point with you. So I guess you could call it a win?
Now that we’re an urban and mechanized society of 300 million, problems that were literally inconceivable 200 years ago need to be addressed.
This is an insidiously evil argument. First it assumes that situations invalidate principles. NO. THEY. DO. NOT… EVER. Principles are valid or invalid. If a situation could change them they would not be principles.
Violating a principle does not invalidate the principle. This is what is so upsetting and evil. It is precisely the violation of principle that you are arguing for. Claiming there is some inconceivable, complicated situation that invalidates a principle is just smoke screen for a completely vapid argument without the least shred of merit. Others have then gone on to give examples which you will ignore as easily as you ignore the principles they are based upon. The fact that you can’t see that creates a chasm too far to cross.
As a foreigner it seems to me that Americans have a very ambivalent attitude towards their constitution. On the one hand they revere it almost as holy writ, but in practice their leaders seem to ignore large sections of it, or reinterpret them as convenient.
Yep, that’s pretty much it, MPM.
It’s a sacred relic, M. We take it out, dust it off, and display it proudly from time to time.
But in seriousness, and in fairness, violent disagreements about its meaning, and one party trying to seize the central power for its own purposes, is nothing new at all. Jefferson despaired of the Republic in the 1820s, as did the Federalists when the Jacksonians wiped them out in that decade. The Civil War certainly put a big crack in it, it seems. Progressivism and that evil gnome FDR were dire threats in their day.
To some extent, we seem to have muddled by on Madison’s genius: that republics do, indeed, collapse into a welter of grabbing for the unlimited Imperial power of the People, accompanied by bread ‘n’ circuses and paying off the Praetorians — except (he thought) if they are big enough, and by “big” he meant polyglot, stuffed full of passionately opposed and competing interest groups. The existence of such competing, mutually suspicious, ideological diversity would guarantee, over the long run, that a coalition majority would always cobble itself together to resist the worst predations of any ambitious minority, and would use the principles in the Constitution as a stick to beat them off.
Generally, he seems to have been right. Lately — I wonder. Perhaps we have become too connected, too uniform, and we no longer benefit from such a wide ideological spectrum. I blame Al Gore and the Internet.
If it was *just* the leaders who were selective in their support for the constitution, it would be one thing…
~Jon
If Obamacare is constitutional, we have experienced the demise of limited government.
This is how far off we are. The demise of limited government has been an ongoing thing for decades. To say Obamacare would define it is to diminish that fact. It’s no joke when they said, “If the Iraquis need a constitution, give them ours, we aren’t using it.”
Why bother with an amendment process when you can just ignore the constitution and make things up as you see fit? The Sotomayor confirmation was bad, but the Kagan confirmation almost caused me to loose all hope. If our leaders don’t understand the constitution and it’s limit on government power where can we turn? If the tea party could understand and explain the issue and ‘we the people’ understood it, elections should be a slam dunk. But they and they don’t.
This issue is simple and should be crystal clear. You said it yourself and even the good guys representing the issue are getting it wrong. The limit on government isn’t about it’s size, it’s about its power (although size contributes to its abuse of power.)
At least for the 20th and 21st centuries, having the US government actually follow the Constitution is like the quip that “Christianity has never been tried.” The government gives lip service to the Constitution, all elected officials swear an oath to uphold it, and then they go and do whatever the hell they want.
I think our founders may have missed this. They should have included an impeachment board with each state choosing one member. Anyone in any branch of government that goes out of bounds regarding the constitutional enumeration of powers gets a public hearing. If they can’t defend their actions using the constitution they are immediately impeached, no appeal. Kagan would last one day longer than her first bad ruling.
ken, the solution is never yet another Star Chamber, Czar, or other source of Ultimate Corrective Power. Keep in mind the Greeks and Romans used to appoint a “dictator” or “imperator” (literally, giver of commands) with power over the usual democratic governing councils to “straighten things out” when they felt the governing process had gone amiss.
We know how that worked out: Caesar, imperial exhaustion, a thousand years of Dark Ages. This is not the right path.
I know you’re right Carl. The founders were relying on an educated public and a media with integrity. Both seem in the minority.
It seems America has battered wife syndrome. We should all be outraged by our governments trampling on rights that can never be waived. We in general are not. If you are, you’re considered a wacko crackpot.
We have a long way to go.
“If our leaders don’t understand the constitution and it’s limit on government power where can we turn?”
There’s the problem. Stop thinking of them and speaking of them as your “leaders”. They are not. They are your representatives — they work for you in the distasteful task of government, a job too dirty for Mike Rowe. Remember that, and whenever you see someone else make the same error, correct them and ask them to do the same in the future. It is a meme that needs to spread. Be sure to remember it at the ballot box.
Yeah I forgot the scare quotes. ‘public servant’ seems like they mock us with it.
Ed I will do that. You have me on board.
I think our history has shown that the checks placed on federal power weren’t entirely adequate–not over the long term, anyway. Maybe adding another branch, re-empowering the states, adding term limits/recall, and/or some other structural change would help to fix things.
End of the day, though, until Americans as a whole return to a general belief that limited government is the safest and best course, we’re fighting a losing battle.
They were adequate enough to prevent the federal branches from trespassing upon each other’s portfolio, but it did not prevent them (esp. the Congress) from intruding on the powers reserved to the states or people — if all 3 branches conspire against you, you’re screwed.
Nothing happened to the Constitution. What happened is that society got more complicated. We’re not a collection of farmers, scattered thinly along coastal states, out plowing the North 40 on the south end of a north-bound mule. Now that we’re an urban and mechanized society of 300 million, problems that were literally inconceivable 200 years ago need to be addressed.
Fortunately, most of the constitution is not a prescription of what we will or won’t do. Rather, it’s a prescription of how to make the decision as to what we will or won’t do.
Ken, a much better view of civil servants and politicians at all levels is as: “Servants of the Public”. There are subtle differences in meaning that place the onus on us – the public – to ascertain that our servants are actually serving us; the public at large!
Sack ’em all and no references!
Chris: That’s all fine and dandy, but a lot of our gripes revolve around the fact that we’re not using the Constitution to make those decisions.
It took a Constitutional Amendment to introduce an income tax, to alter the balance of power between the federal government and the states in specific ways (direct election of senators, national voting standards for age and gender, etc.), to end the practice of slavery by individual citizens, or even to make illegal the manufacture and sale of a specific product.
And yet, a simple decree by the President, a judge, or, most common of all these days, an unelected and largely unknown mandarin bureaucrat, is all that it takes to bring forth new law, even from whole cloth, even if it directly contradicts the Constitution and its Amendments. We might as well bring back formal hereditary positions and titles of nobility, while we’re at it.
Brilliant comment, Ed! I shall remember it.
Now that we’re an urban and mechanized society of 300 million, problems that were literally inconceivable 200 years ago need to be addressed.
Yeah? Name one. This is one of the more brain-dead memes I’ve ever heard statists advance. As if human nature had become totally different in the last 200 years — or plain thinking moral principles had become “outdated” by the Internet. Feh.
Carl Pham – providing health care for all was not conceived of by the Founding Fathers because all health care sucked. Since the Founders didn’t object to slavery, civil rights for black wasn’t conceived of.
A large standing military fighting overseas was conceived of, but explicitly rejected.
Don’t be ridiculous, Chris. There is no chance whatsoever that Madison and Jefferson looked around them and said Gee, our health care sucks! On the contrary, Jefferson in particular believed he lived in an age of discovery and miracle science, and he would have forcefully argued to you that his medical care was light-years ahead of that up with which the poor slobs 200 years earlier had to put.
And I’m equally sure that your descendants, if any, in 2210 will laugh at how sucky your health care is now. Either way, I am perfectly sure the Founders understood the nature of changing technology — and felt quite correctly that it had exactly zero to do with the good government of men.
For example, they would have been appalled at the monumental stupidity and potentiality for corruption (both venial and political) extant in a proposal that men should pay for their health care by having a big chunk of their earnings taxed away, and then having it given back to them according to some scheme satisfactory to the party in power at that time in Congress. That would’ve made as much sense as everyone voluntarily becoming slaves: people whose labor belonged entirely to some master, who would then dole out living quarters, food, and clothing as he saw fit.
A large standing military fighting overseas was conceived of, but explicitly rejected
In what sense? It was rejected at the time as unnecessary and undesirable, but of course they left open the possibility in the Constitution that, at some point, it might become both. Had they truly felt it was always a bad idea, they would have ruled it out, or put big roadblocks in its path, when they wrote the Constitution. They did no such thing.
I’ve never heard any reasonable argument that the principles as old as classical Greece — the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the obligation of government to govern with the consent of the governed, or any such thing — must be different in a nation of plowmen than they are in a nation of Twittering office drones. If you think you’ve got one, let’s hear it.
I’ve never heard any reasonable argument that the principles as old as classical Greece — the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the obligation of government to govern with the consent of the governed, None of these principles have been violated. You don’t like health care? Get enough Congressmen and Senators elected to repeal it.
You don’t like health care? Get enough Congressmen…
Already done!
…and Senators elected to repeal it.
Coming up, in 2012!
And when it happens, will you sit back and accept the will of the majority? Or grumble and gripe about how “fundamental rights” like health care shouldn’t be subject to the whims of the mob?
Health care is not a fundamental right. It’s something we should provide to all, but it is not a right.
Is that so? And how do you propose “providing” it to all without violating some of the existing rights — like the right of some men to their liberty? To the fruits of their labor? To make contracts with whomever they please? To be just as stupid as they like — smoke, eat too much, skydive, fail to buy health insurance — so long as they do not infringe on the rights of others?
You can’t get your goodies unless you seriously overrun those very well-established rights. That’s why people have argued “decent health care” is a “right” — because only then, if it’s a co-equal right, can you justify the infringement of other, pre-existing rights. If it’s not a right, then things that are rights take clear precedence, and your goal cannot be reached.
Post-script: also, let me point something else out: we already “provide” health care for all. No one is turned away by doctors or hospitals because he’s the wrong race, the wrong social class, not a member of the Ruling Party.
What you want is for their to be no obligation to pay for your medical care. For you, the patient, to have the right to command someone else to cover its cost — either the doctor works for free, donating his labor to you, or some other schmo has to work twice as hard, to pay for his own medical care and yours, whether he wants to or not, whether it severely harms his own fortunes and family or not.
I don’t see why you don’t equally well think that if I need a blood transfusion or organ donation, I should have the “right” to go out into the street and round up the first suitable donor I find and force him (with the assistance of the sheriff’s deputies) to give me what I need. Society should provide me with health care!
Carl Pham: Everybody is going to need health care at some point in their lives. What I want is for everybody to pay into the system. Currently, the uninsured don’t, so when they go to the emergency room, they get poor care (no long-term follow up, etc.) at high cost, and all on my (insured) bill.
What the rest of the world does is that one pays in, via taxes or mandatory insurance, and one gets covered. Since no other free-world country has banned cheeseburgers or made doctors work for free, I see no reason for that to happen in the USA.
I refer you to comments made in a previous thread – when I say “2 + 2 =4” that’s what I mean. Please don’t try and argue I said “2 + 2 = 17.” It makes you look stupid and pisses me off.
So, you want everybody to pay into the “system”… whereupon “somebody” will get to determine how “best” to “distribute” it.
Riiiight.
And, going back to the actual topic, which you so neatly diverted the conversation from… where in the Constitution (y’know, the law of the land) is the federal government given the authority and power to create this system or appoint the “somebody” in the first place?
Again, the Constitution provides a mechanism by which this all can be done within its limits (i.e., legally!), specifically by outright changing the text of the Constitution itself. To steal from Wilford Brimley, “Wonderful thing, an Amendment.” You can do anything to the Constitution with one. Hereditary titles of nobility? Sure! Dictatorship for life? No problem! Universal health care? You bet! The possibilities are endless. All you need is enough votes in Congress and enough state legislatures, one time.
The catch is, a lot of folks think that’s too much trouble to go through these days. It’s so haaaaaard to get an Amendment passed, and it’s so much easier just to get 5 justices to find an emanation of a penumbra, or just flat-out enact things by decree. Who needs the Constitution, anyways? It’s old, and it was written by a bunch of old white guys… some of whom owned slaves!
Everybody is going to need health care at some point in their lives. What I want is for everybody to pay into the system.
Chris, everyone needs food, shelter, clothes. Do you see a need for everyone to pay the government their earnings, and for government then to distribute those things? If so, then as I said, you just want us all to be happy little slaves, our labor owned by government, and our living given to us by it. Not for me, thanks.
If not — what’s so damn special about doctor bills? Why do you propose this gigantic Rube Goldberg device of paying cash into the Treasury (with a bit skimmed off the top to pay for accountants and lawyers to see the paperwork is filed properly), and then having the money go out of the Treasury to pay for medical care (with a bit more skimmed off the top, and plenty of opportunities both coming and going for graft, corruption, and influence peddling)?
Pleeeeez don’t trot out that madness of the fact that sometimes you get hit with more medical bills in a year than your salary or savings can cover. For God’s sake, people buy houses, you know, and houses typically cost 3 to 5 times an annual salary. People also cope with their house burning down by accident, too. Or car accidents in which two victims end up paraplegic and you’re on the hook for $1 million in medical costs. This is what the entire private financial market is for — this is why you buy insurance, why the credit markets exist, et cetera and so forth.
I suppose you may then argue that this is all different, morally, because…well, why? What’s so morally different about asking a man to X-ray your chest and tell you whether you have operable lung cancer, and another man to cut it out, compared to asking a man to rebuild your house if a lightning strike burns it down, or a man to pay you enough to buy groceries and cover your rent if you’re injured on the job and can’t work? The consequences are no less serious and life-altering. The fact that you’re asking for someone else’s skilled labor, the sale of which is the only way he can pay his bills, isn’t different.
Yes, it’s a cruel world, reality, where if you are stupid or shiftless you may well go hungry, do without material goods, or even die younger than you could. So? This is why we work, isn’t it? This is the difference between this mortal vale o’ tears and Eden, or between being an adult, with adult responsibilities, and being a child who counts on Mom and Dad to take ultimate responsibility.
Currently, the uninsured don’t, so when they go to the emergency room, they get poor care (no long-term follow up, etc.) at high cost, and all on my (insured) bill.
All urban myths. First, “follow up care” and its cousin “preventative care” both increase overall healthcare expenses. (They make life much more comfortable, and are well worth the expense, mind you. But they don’t reduce total costs.) Secondly, the burdens of the costs of treating uninsured people who (1) earn too much to qualify for Medicaid and other such charity programs but (2) foolishly don’t carry insurance and (3) don’t pay their bills and (4) don’t have enough moveable assets or wages to be recovered by the usual legal means are small. And if that worries you, you can repeal the “patient dumping” laws and let the threat of getting lower class treatment induce people to pay for the damn insurance or sign up for Medicaid as they should.
What the rest of the world does is that one pays in, via taxes or mandatory insurance, and one gets covered.
What you mean by “rest of the world” is most of Europe, Canada, et cetera. But, in addition to the fact that, as your mother told you, the fact that everyone else jumps off a cliff is no reason to do so yourself, these systems are all coming unglued. The NHS in England is forced to hire medical workers from the former Empire, because they can’t pay enough to hire English men and women. Let’s not get into the horrors of the “Liverpool path.” Europe has survival rates for serious diseases requiring long term follow-up care, like heart disease and cancer, that are substantially poorer than the US. In Canada there are painful shortages of primary OB/GYN docs for deliveries. Wealthy Tasha Richardson dies in a skiing accident nearly identical to one that my daughter readily survived 8 years ago — because her family didn’t have the same option I had, which is to pay a helicopter pilot $2500 to fly her to a hospital.
In short, unsurprisingly, when you construct a giant inefficient centrally-driven mechanism to do what is better done in a distributed-intelligence “grassroots” multi-centered efficient mechanism, the results are noticeably poorer. Why on Earth would any sane person wish it? Or any experienced person be surprised by it? Supposed the CEO of the firm for which you work came and said hey Chris, we’ve got a new idea, where instead of paying you your entire wages, we are going to keep back 40% of them, what our average employee spends on housing. Then they company will rent houses and apartments, and you’ll be assigned to one. Sound good to you? Why would you insist on choice and freedom when it comes to your residence, the car you buy or don’t buy — even what kind of cell phone service you buy — but not in the most important decisions you’ll ever make: what kind of medical care to buy?
None of these principles have been violated.
This is a completely false statement that invalidates any argument that follows. If you can’t get this correct (the premise) it’s hopeless. The principle that you and all other people as well have the unwaverable, inviolable, total and absolute right to use, control and/or dispose of whatever you possess without taking that same right from others except where both/all parties agree is a first principle. Every argument you make violates it. You completely ignore it in order to make your invalid argument.
This is so absolutely basic that it suggests the fools are those that would continue to argue the point with you. So I guess you could call it a win?
Now that we’re an urban and mechanized society of 300 million, problems that were literally inconceivable 200 years ago need to be addressed.
This is an insidiously evil argument. First it assumes that situations invalidate principles. NO. THEY. DO. NOT… EVER. Principles are valid or invalid. If a situation could change them they would not be principles.
Violating a principle does not invalidate the principle. This is what is so upsetting and evil. It is precisely the violation of principle that you are arguing for. Claiming there is some inconceivable, complicated situation that invalidates a principle is just smoke screen for a completely vapid argument without the least shred of merit. Others have then gone on to give examples which you will ignore as easily as you ignore the principles they are based upon. The fact that you can’t see that creates a chasm too far to cross.