Gun Nuts Media

To talk to you for a minute about health care.  Before I get too far afield from my usual writing topics, the following disclaimers apply: I’m a gun writer.  I’m not a health care writer, or even really much of a political writer these days.  But after I watched CNN’s live coverage of the House vote on the 1.1 TRILLION (that’s trillion with a “t”) health care bill, I almost felt compelled to address it.  First, seeing as no one (not even our representatives) has read the 1990 page bill, here are some fun things that are in the bill that you may not know about.  Also, by way of comparison: my copy of Moby Dick is 583 pages long.  You could fit 3.41 copies of the entire text of Moby Dick into the health care bill.  Awesome.

Despite how upset I am about none of our legislators reading this bill, or how angry I am that our government has decided to ram legislation down our throats that 53% of the country doesn’t want, that’s not actually want I want to talk to you about today.  No, today I want to explain a very simple concept that is the fundamental tenet behind my opposition to government run healthcare in any form.  I believe, and I always have, that individual rights and liberties are the foundation of our country.  Government run healthcare undercuts those right at a fundamental level, because it places the power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats to remove the most important of all individual rights: to do stuff that is bad for you.

Before my libertarian homeboys get all up in arms because drugs are illegal and whatnot, it is worth pointing out that the bulk of the prohibitions on stuff that’s bad for you right now were passed by our elected representatives – people that we could have unelected for doing things that aren’t in the Constitution.  Now, if our President were to eventually sign this bill into law, it places that power squarely in the hands of a bureaucrat making $35,000 a year who hates his job.  You like skydiving?  Too dangerous, now you can’t sky dive if you want health care.  Do you like barbeque?  Too much risk for a heart attack, now certain foods are illegal if you want health care.

At the root of all of my disagreement with government health care is the phrase most often used by pro-abortion activists, “my body, my choice.”  A government run health care scam has the power to remove that choice from you by denying you care simply because your lifestyle choices are not in line with what the .gov thinks is best for you.  Supporting the Health Care Bill is effectively the same as surrendering your right as an individual to make your own choices to the government.  While I’m not saying that the passage of this bill would be a bullet in the brain of liberty, it certainly is a lot further down the slippery slope than I thought I’d see in my lifetime.

Yesterday afternoon, I put up a link to the Warrior Song, not knowing what was about to take place at Fort Hood in Texas.  There, a man took the lives of his fellow soldiers, and while his motives are not clear at this time, what is clear is that today we are a lesser nation for the loss of the lives of those soldiers.

The Warrior Song got me thinking, though – about the nature of our grief for those soldiers who lost their lives yesterday.  Whether they were a clerk, a cook, an accountant, a rifleman, it doesn’t matter – each and every one of them was a warrior.  So yes, mourn their passing.  Grieve for their families in their hour of lost.  Grieve for our nation, for we are indeed a lesser country for each warrior we lose.  But never forget that they were the best of us; as long as nation remains one where men and women volunteer to defend their nation, we are truly a great nation.