When the Irrational Becomes Rational

     The recent effort by House Republicans to repeal the health care law, which was passed by Democrats, was an exercise not only in futility but also exercises in contradiction and  hypocrisy.  

     They argued that the legislation should be repealed because the American people, in Nov. 2010, voted to have it repealed.  But they act as if they (and so did the Democrats, for that matter) forgot that these same American people, in Nov. 2008, voted for universal health care when they elected Barack Obama President of the United States.

     Republicans are acting as if they misunderstood what voters were voting for in Nov. 2010.  Voters were saying repeal the law if Republicans are elected in numbers sufficient to (1) have the repeal approved by both the House and Senate, (2) override a presidential veto, and (3) have written and passed a better law in its place.

     But Republicans didn't not win in sufficient number to achieve those ends.  Sufficient numbers in the Senate were impossible, anyway.  Voters made sure they wouldn't even have enough members in the Senate to control the agenda,   The American people spoke, but they said something different from what Republicans claim they heard.

     What voters did said, and what recent polls suggest they are saying now, is:  If you cannot repeal the health care law and pass another law, then, at least FIX the present law.  But Republicans have failed--or refused--to draw that conclusion about the American people's intent.  They persist in believing, or acting as if they believe, that the American people don't have much sense, and that the people really don't want universal health care.  

     But it is Republicans who don't want health care.  What better evidence of that than the fact that during all of the time when they controlled the Congress, during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, they did not seek to implement health-care legislation.  And as Dr Phil continues to remind us:  The best predictor of what people will do in the future is what they have done in the past.

     Republicans have come up with four committees presumably to work on a Republican proposal for health-care legislation.  But there is no timeline for them to complete their work.  I understand that Republicans under Bob Dole had a plan, but Republican cannot use that one because it already incorporated in the present law.

     Concerning whether everyone should be required to buy health care insurance, this was a source of disagreement between Obama and Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries:  Clinton thought everyone should be required to buy insurance.  Obama thought that a mandate would not be necessary because the only reason people would not buy insurance was be if they couldn't afford it.  The present law seeks to make insurance affordable for everyone by helping those who cannot afford it.  People who want to be thought of as Christians but who don't want to act like Christians call such an accommodation for the less able Socialism.  But sometimes Christians and Socialists do the same kinds of things.

     Republicans are trying to get the courts to get rid of the bill by saying its unconstitutional to require those who can afford insurance to buy insurance.  But care of the uninsured is one of the main reasons why the skyrocketing health care cost is being passed on to those who have insurance.  Will those who refuse to purchase health care insurance be saying by not buying insurance that if they have serious accidents or become ill at home, they should be treated at home, or if they are injured in accidents in the highway, they want to be treated by the side of the road or taken home?  How do they expected to be cared for?  If they have the right to not buy insurance, will ambulance services and hospitals be given the right to deny them serviced?

     Republican actions have become irrational.  Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and the Tea Party are running them crazy, or at least causing them to act as if they are..  Their arguments are sinking to level of outright lies that everyone now recognize as being untrue.  Their augments are becoming sinking to levels liken to justifying the Tuscan shootings.  Even Jared Loughner's defense attorney won't try to make that case.  

     But if normally rational people like congressional Republicans can act irrationally--even when they know better--how can one expect better from those who don't know better.  Unfortunately, Republicans believe--or act like they believe--that the American voters are among those who don't know any better.

     The way to satisfy what the people voted for in both 2008 and 2010 (and the American people are smarter than Republican hope they are) is to use this time for Republicans to work with Democrats to fix what wrong the law that's on the books, now.  These four House committees should be committees of Republicans and Democrats.  And these committees should do all of their deliberating before the camera on C-Span--like Obama promised but did not do.

     A government that is publicly irrational in its pursuits of solutions to its own problems can't gain the confidence of the Chinese nor sustain the confidence of its allies and the rest of the world.  

     The nation's economy and the world need a strong United States of America.    But both also need a rational United States because only a stable United States can survive.

Ronald

What Do We Seek to Become?

     The Constitution of the United States of America was ratified in 1788, and the first president was elected in 1789.  The contents of the Constitution were debated for the most part by Christian men of reason, and were finally written and ratified during a time when there was no political party.  Reason and compromise prevailed, and a great nation was born.   

     If the great political, religious, and racial divides that exist today in America have any significance, it probably rests in those reasons why we exist and feel that we still deserve to exist as a nation.  It rests in the reasons why we have our form of government, our political and economic systems--and until recently, our kind of politics--and not the other alternatives.  It rests in the reasons we have to trust or distrust our economic and political systems, which must be anchored in integrity but are potentially the roots of considerable evil.   Who we are--and even what we hope to become--rest on whether those reasons are changing, and on whether Americans both want and expect economic and political integrity to be lasting attributes of this nation.

     In his historic Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln said, "our forefathers established on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."  Although there were plenty of red and black men in America--and of other colors throughout the world--when the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were written, the majority of the Founders chose to reference ALL men, meaning not just all WHITE men.  "ALL men are created equal" included colored people.  

     In the midst of the "Great Civil War," Lincoln was reminding us that we were  "testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated (could) long endure."  He was not questioning the merits of equality; he was questioning white America's ability to extend the "blessings of liberty" to people of color:  Did a substantial majority of white Christian Americans believe it, and were the others at least willing to act like they did because it was the right thing to do?  

     There was, even then, a strong case to be made for all men not being created equal.  Even people of the same color were not equivalent:  They had different heights, talents, intelligence, areas and levels of creativity, degrees of attractiveness, etc.   But "equal" did not mean equivalent or identical.  Equal meant of equal worth, deserving of equal respect as human beings, deserving to be treated as one would like to be treated.            

     Those who suggest that men were not all created equal imply by such suggestions that some people--usually themselves--are superior to others.  But such superiority usually means that some people had advantages not available to those whom they consider inferior.   Within every race and within every endeavor, everything else being equal, there are millions of individuals who can outperform millions of members of any races.   In other words: not every member of any race of people is superior to every member of any other race in any attribute.  

     The exercise and levels of genius within a culture depends on the physical, social and intellectual environments where geniuses reside.  It depends on the perceived physical, social and intellectual needs of that society, and on the society's demands for and commitments to intellectual resourcefulness.  Creativity (and at what level it is allowed to exist) often depends on whether prevailing attitudes will allow ingenuity to be expressed.

     Whereas, scientific, economic, and medical genius easily find avenues for expression, social, educational and moral genius, which address how we relate to each other, because of a lack of financial reward, have a much harder time being developed, even when there are examples of success, and when there are such obvious needs for them.

     So we are back to the original question:  Who are we as Americans, and what do we seek to become?  Just what did the Founders envision when they "established on this continent a new nation"?  What did they mean by "all men (being) created equal and endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"?  And does our survival, as a nation founded on those principles, depend on our either believing them or acting as if we do.

     There are those who say it was no coincidence that men of the intelligence, wisdom and integrity of the Founders lived at the same time, in the same place, to address a situation that required their presence.  They say it was divine providence.   And although Lincoln expressed some concern whether a nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal' could "long endure," he closes his address by optimistically saying that the nation would have a "new birth of freedom," and that government of the people, by the people and for the people (would) not perish from the earth.  Was Lincoln being prophetic or was it just an expression of hope?

      One hundred years later, during the sixties, the nation experienced what many considered that new birth.  And although it may only have put finishing touches on the first one, It felt good to be an American.  Since then, however, who we are and what we seek to become as Americans have become increasingly relevant questions.   

     Paraphrasing Jesus, Lincoln said that a nation divided against itself cannot stand.   Because of slavery, the nation was divided North against South.  Later, the South would be separated, White from Black.  And, now, there are religious divides in a country once aspirating to be "one nation under God."    

     If the Founders were men chosen by The Creator to establish a model nation for the world, who chose these flounderers who seem committed to preventing it from happening?

Ronald