John R. Guardiano: The Civil War History of Obamacare
The Democratic Left is fond of invoking history and thus heralds its new "comprehensive national healthcare reform" bill as "historic. That it is.
But the historical comparison that may be most apt isn't Social Security or Medicare, both of which were enacted into law with bipartisan majorities. This latest "reform" initiative, by contrast, hasn't gotten a single Republican vote.
No, the more apt historical analogy may be the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which, by allowing for the expansion of slavery into new federal territories, led to the Civil War....
That's because just as the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 promised to perpetuate slavery in the United States, so too, does "comprehensive national healthcare reform" promise to create a new form of economic slavery in America....
And so this abomination, this act of economic and generational theft, cannot stand. Because like the literal act of slavery that preceded it, "comprehensive national healthcare reform" is incompatible with American liberty and the principles of freedom upon which America was founded.
That's why the healthcare reform debate, far from ending, has instead really just begun. But where is our modern-day Abraham Lincoln?
Lincoln, of course, opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 because he believed that slavery was fundamentally incompatible with America's founding principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There can be no "moral right in the enslaving of one man by another," Lincoln declared.
Lincoln's opponents, like Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, countered that they were not arguing for slavery per se. Instead, they said, they were arguing for "popular sovereignty," through which the question of slavery would be decided by voters within each of the respective territories.
Likewise, today, advocates of "comprehensive national healthcare reform" insist that they are not for eliminating private-sector medicine. They simply want to ensure that "everyone has access to healthcare." Why, they even purport to believe in choice and competition!
What's more, they say, "comprehensive national healthcare reform" isn't another costly new entitlement program. It won't massively increase the national debt and enslave future generations. No, sir, it actually will save money and help balance the budget!...
Here's something else Lincoln understood: the need, sometimes, for a new political party. Lincoln, remember, abandoned the Whigs to become the standard-bearer, in 1860, of the new Republican Party. The Whigs fractured over slavery and westward expansion; and their leaders grew old and tired.
Like the 19th Century Whigs, today's GOP has an age or generational problem -- though not for long, I think. "Comprehensive national healthcare reform," after all, is little more than an assault on young, working Americans, who will be forced to pay the price -- both literally and figuratively -- for Obamacare....