I and thousands of other protesters attended the health care rally in DC yesterday. The protesters were great. The speakers, not so much.
At about 12:05, all of the House Republicans came running down from the Capitol building. One legislator tried in vain to pump up the crowd. I kept expecting to hear Queen blasting from the speakers. The speakers all co-opted tea party terms like liberty into their speeches. Many spoke about the need to defend the Constitution. But where was this principle during the Bush years? Where was this principle when they authorized a monstrous new entitlement program costing us billions (Medicare part D)? Or expanded education spending exponentially (No Child Left Behind)? Or passed out "stimulus checks"? Or bailed out banks from their "troubled assets"?
I am glad that our reps railed against health care. I will take any help I can get to kill the bill. But don't insult me by waving your Constitution around when you have clearly ignored it for the last 8 years. And longer. Really, the last 100 years.
Republicans and Democrats are plagued by a similar character flaw; arrogance. They all think that they know what's best for your life better than you do. Republicans are liberals with a clearer sense of human nature. That's why they try to interject market forces into (Medicare Part D's "donut hole") or "reform" entitlements (welfare reform in the 1990's) rather than just doing away with it all and letting you decide what's best for the life of you and your family. They don't want you to be able to use your money the way that you want to. They are wiser than you, and they will use your money better than you will.
But they are all human beings. Some of them are wiser than us, but that does not give them the right to dictate to ordinary Americans what's best for our lives. Hayek commented on the basic problem with this mindset. He said that information is the primary problem. No bureaucrat or politician can have the detailed knowledge of the lives of all Americans in order to make informed, rational decisions on all of our behalf. If he had that knowledge, and he was wise enough, he could make great decisions for all of us. But each one of us knows what's best for ourselves better than any politician. A little humility and acknowledgment of human limitations would be greatly refreshing from our leaders. Policy cannot solve every problem. It can't even solve most of them.
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The original design for congress was to have people elected to represent the wishes of certain areas of the country. This has been all but forgotten by the public, and almost completely ignored by the elected representatives for decades now, and that is part of the problem of why we are in such a mess. There was a great article I read earlier today that explained the main reason we are in this mess with the obamacare (actually, pelosicare) bill now; the first model was designed in such a way that it created extreme outrage from the public. for months the american people stood up and said NO to the bill, and the administration backed off, even saying that the public option was "dead". however, now they have this bill which is even worse than the first, but they are in a position now where the american public has died down, grown tired and complacent again, and they are probably going to be able to push this through by using the dumbed down state of the public. the same thing was done when bush bailed out the banks; people were outraged when the initial TARP funds were proposed, and the bill failed; later on, when the public opinion had died down, a new version was passed. what this country needs is a resurgency of libertarian ideals like we saw in washington when over 2 million people marched a couple months ago, but we need that on a nationwide scale.
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