I’m sure everyone has heard about the health care law and many people have weighed in on it. I’m most amused by the “it’s the end of the USA” commentary and the hyperbole of dire predictions. Someone once said a good compromise leaves everyone angry (and much to my dismay, I still can’t find the original attribution) and that’s what we have here. The GOP is upset that their political power play failed and more liberal people are mad of what wasn’t in the bill. As to my opinion, most of my thoughts are pretty much summed up by Mr. John Scalzi at Whatever in this elegant post.
Two items he didn’t cover which I think is important. In the significant years that the GOP controlled Congress, no attempt was made to address health care on a meaningful basis. Secondly, the plan is in many ways the same counter-proposal the GOP offered in the early 90′s when Clinton was trying to get this done. That the GOP this year essentially bet that they could kill the bill without offering any type of substantive bill proposal on which a compromise could be struck seems unfathomable to me. It is certainly not good governance.
I did want to talk about something else though that I see in the post-debate about the law. Many detractors spend an enormous amount of time quoting the Founding Fathers as their way of declaring their own patriotism and decrying the law that was passed as somehow contrary to the wishes of the Founders. Let me bring up two examples.
First of all, let’s talk Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was a noted champion of individual rights and a strong believer of limited government and as such, is often quoted when addressing those topics. I’ve seen a lot of Jefferson quotes in the last few days. However, Jefferson was not a fan of corporate laissez faire and preferred the virtues of agrarian society rather than the commerce of Hamilton. Let’s take this quote:
In this respect England exhibits the most remarkable phenomenon in the universe in the contrast between the profligacy of it’s government and the probity of it’s citizens. And accordingly it is now exhibiting an example of the truth of the maxim that virtue & interest are inseparable. It ends, as might have been expected, in the ruin of it’s people, but this ruin will fall heaviest, as it ought to fall on that hereditary aristocracy which has for generations been preparing the catastrophe. I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
In reading that text from Jefferson, what do you think his take would be on the massive health care corporations that function today? If you could take Jefferson and bring him to present day, he would be amazed at where we’ve come, but dismayed at how much power corporations have amassed in the two-hundred and thirty four years since inception.
As it is, I see a lot of his quotes misapplied, unreasonably taken out of context and stretched as far as truth will take them. It’s sad and Jefferson deserves better.
Let’s talk Benjamin Franklin as ol’ Ben is a favorite of mine. I’ve enjoyed reading about him and his exploits both here and overseas. I want to address a quote I’ve seen very recently in regards to the health care law.
Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety.
I see this quote a lot as I read Slashdot fairly often and it is brought up when talking about security issues. When you talk about putting security cameras on the streets of a city, GPS monitoring, DNA profiling and countering the knee-jerk “what do you have to hide” crowd, this quote is entirely acceptable. In terms of the health law…I’m not seeing it. Perhaps it’s the mandatory requirement of having insurance, and I can barely see the justification for using this quote. Honestly though, it makes little sense when you consider the power of the quote in relation to the drafting of the Fourth Amendment, and then compare it to the health care law. The context of what Franklin was referring to when the quote originated is so far removed today’s application, it boggles the mind.
Speaking of, much of what is quoted today from the Founding Fathers is important, but it has to be taken with a grain of salt. When I see a quote from Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Washington, et al., I always think about what was said at the time and the motives behind those words or actions. To quote the Founding Fathers just willy-nilly as a defense of your position without cause of knowing why it was said in the first place smacks of a certain dishonesty or at least a lack of rigor in your intellectual justification.
In all, I find it distasteful the way the words are being packaged with the modern message. Say if you were to take a Founding Father quote that if skewed in a certain light can be used to apply it to a narrow philosophy and apply it to a modern situation who’s opposite position you find distasteful…and the subtext of the meaning is that if you disagree with me, then you are against freedom, liberty, just plain anti-American or a host of other negative connotations. It’s hard for me to discern any other approach than this when it’s so often used in this way. It’s not that you disagree with someone or you don’t like their idea or position, not anymore. It’s that the other person is not as patriotic as you are, an ad hominem attack and sets up the quote itself as a strawman argument. In the case of health care, it’s not the merits or deficiencies of the bill that are in question but the supporters are of opposite mind and that they are wrong.
Personally, I try not to use quotes from others unless I know the full context, unless it is for comedic effect. I don’t use quotes very often at all, really. I like them, I think they have their place and they have lessons from the past which are worth learning. However, in the debate of ideas, they should not be used as currency, but rather as touchstones placed in proper context.
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