Shikha Dalmia: How to Oppose Obama With Lessons from Gandhi
[Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst at Reason Foundation and a biweekly columnist at Forbes.]
President Barack Obama came into office promising hope and change. But he might get more change than he hoped for. By foisting ObamaCare on a deeply unwilling country he might have set the stage for the largest civil disobedience movement since the civil rights era, which, if it plays its cards right, could undo his legislation and his legacy....
It is hardly surprising then that Americans are feeling a growing panic as they watch their constitutional republic descend into a banana republic. President Obama is fond of quoting Mahatma Gandhi's line that "we should be the change we want to see." But Gandhi also said that "civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless and corrupt." Americans instinctively understand this which is why pockets of resistance to ObamaCare are already emerging. The question is only whether they can be constructively harnessed into a grassroots, Gandhi-style civil disobedience movement powerful enough to undo this monstrosity....
As for maintaining the moral high ground, ObamaCare opponents have to be very careful when invoking rhetoric from the revolutionary period. Tea Partiers quote the Founders, especially Thomas Jefferson who said that the "tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants." But any hint of violence—even inadvertent—will compromise their cause because there are crucial differences between our colonial and current rulers. The colonial rulers were monarchs who used violence to extract taxes from Americans to enrich themselves and their motherland. But Democrats are imposing mandates to force Americans to do something for their own alleged good—and taxes to redistribute wealth among Americans. This is wrong and completely at odds with the spirit of American freedom and self-reliance. But the Repeal ObamaCare movement can only succeed if it convinces potential beneficiaries of redistributionist policies of the rightness of its cause....
By some estimates, Uncle Sam will need to hire an additional 17,000 IRS agents or so just to enforce the coverage mandate. But even if a few million Americans simultaneously refuse to abide by it, they could easily overwhelm the system. Self-rule or swaraj, Gandhi said, requires a collective understanding of the immense capacity of citizens to "regulate and control" the coercive apparatus of the state through mass nonviolent resistance....
Read entire article at Reason Magazine
President Barack Obama came into office promising hope and change. But he might get more change than he hoped for. By foisting ObamaCare on a deeply unwilling country he might have set the stage for the largest civil disobedience movement since the civil rights era, which, if it plays its cards right, could undo his legislation and his legacy....
It is hardly surprising then that Americans are feeling a growing panic as they watch their constitutional republic descend into a banana republic. President Obama is fond of quoting Mahatma Gandhi's line that "we should be the change we want to see." But Gandhi also said that "civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless and corrupt." Americans instinctively understand this which is why pockets of resistance to ObamaCare are already emerging. The question is only whether they can be constructively harnessed into a grassroots, Gandhi-style civil disobedience movement powerful enough to undo this monstrosity....
As for maintaining the moral high ground, ObamaCare opponents have to be very careful when invoking rhetoric from the revolutionary period. Tea Partiers quote the Founders, especially Thomas Jefferson who said that the "tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants." But any hint of violence—even inadvertent—will compromise their cause because there are crucial differences between our colonial and current rulers. The colonial rulers were monarchs who used violence to extract taxes from Americans to enrich themselves and their motherland. But Democrats are imposing mandates to force Americans to do something for their own alleged good—and taxes to redistribute wealth among Americans. This is wrong and completely at odds with the spirit of American freedom and self-reliance. But the Repeal ObamaCare movement can only succeed if it convinces potential beneficiaries of redistributionist policies of the rightness of its cause....
By some estimates, Uncle Sam will need to hire an additional 17,000 IRS agents or so just to enforce the coverage mandate. But even if a few million Americans simultaneously refuse to abide by it, they could easily overwhelm the system. Self-rule or swaraj, Gandhi said, requires a collective understanding of the immense capacity of citizens to "regulate and control" the coercive apparatus of the state through mass nonviolent resistance....