Recently, some states, (my state of Missouri among them) have started movements to declare the recently passed federal health care initiative unconstitutional.
First, I want to say that my main objection to the bill is that it's too long. I realize that this is, in some ways, a ridiculous objection to a legislation, and violates one of my main ideals, which is that you make an argument on the merits and facts, not on inconsequential distractions from the main point. However, I make an exception in this case because the bill is too long for several practical reasons. First of all, most people will not read it. While this probably includes most of the Congressmen and Senators that voted for or against the bill, it is most certainly true of the general population. So the resultant problem is that people still don't know exactly what's in the bill. My other strong objection is that lengthy bills most likely have contradictory clauses in them, as well as hidden provisions crafted to give powerful groups major advantages. You can bet that special interests got little jewels inserted in the bill to help themselves out, most likely at the expense of someone else. You can also bet that the average small businessman won't have time to read and understand the bill or craft his own business procedures to take best advantage of the bill. In the absence of direct understanding of the bill, people will listen to the worst fears of other people commenting on the bill, who also don't have a clue what's in it. When it's too big to have an honest debate over, when it's too big to have a simple understanding of it, it's too big to be useful to most people that will be impacted by it.
Besides getting sidetracked on the length of the health care bill, the State-based protests against the bill remind me very much of lead up to the Civil War. The Civil War became about slavery, but at the time, it was always couched in the argument of states rights. Ultimately, southern seccessionists claimed that the rights of the state were paramount and they rejected federal oversight over their state. They wanted each State to be an independent sovereign entity, which begs the question of why you would ever need to be in a group of states in the first place. The question was answered quite soundly by the outcome of the Civil War. The south could not enforce even the simplest demands for unity in a group that broke away from the Union because they did not want to be told what to do. At times in the war, this caused problems of manpower and resource allocation that were fatal to the Southern cause. So it is fine to say that you do not want "Big Government", but unfortunately, the will of the majority will most generally supercede regional desires, and populist movements that do not also control the central government will be exercises in futility.
People forget that - ironically - individual rights flow from a strong central government which should be kept in check by the normal functions of a democratic society. Another strange irony of our form of government is that the central government is empowered to protect the rights of minorities from the will of a populist majority. While it is clear that we can't suddenly all vote that red haired persons of Irish decent will hence forth be slaves, in other words, you can't deliberately take away a basic right from someone, the health care debate doesn't actually fall into this category. You don't have a right to health care. You might say that the right to Life in the Declaration of Independence could be stretched to include health care, but I don't think anyone will be able to do that successfully.
This right is more along the line of taxes. The tax code, which everyone hates, is supposed to insure that we all contribute to the financial well being of the state. It's been corrupted with a tiered system on one hand, and massive loopholes on the other to the point where few would argue that it is fair to all citizens any more, but it is an example of a system where we are all expected to contribute and we are all expected to benefit. The health care initiative is supposed to work like that. Setting aside the argument of whether or not we have some moral obligation to provide health care for everyone, there are practical reasons to force everyone into some system of coverage. It's a little like the tax paying example. If you could opt out, many people would. However, you can't then exempt them from the benefits. You can't leave them out of defense and Homeland Security. You can't force them not to use the infrastructure. With Health Care, many people without insurance coverage still get treatment, they just don't pay for it. They pass it on to the people in the system that do pay for it.
So Health Care that forces collective coverage should be more fair and spread the cost out (and they claim it should also reduce overall costs, but I'm very uncertain how this could be true). Is this the role of a strong central government?
We have no problem spending large sums of money on Defense. This is supposed to keep us safe and healthy, ultimately. However, it's a vague benefit. Did fighting in Afghanistan keep terrorists from attacking us here? You can't prove it, and even if you could site a specific attack that was thwarted, how many lives were saved in the process? I think it's a very cost-ineffective way to save lives. In contrast, a health care system where the government stepped in and directly covered uninsured people would arguable provide a more concrete benefit in people saved per dollars spent. Our recently passed health care initiative does not claim to do that. It seems that it forces you to be insured, and for the most part, forces yourself or your employer to pay for it. Unfortunately, I did not read the bill, so that may not be entirely correct.
The other thing that the Health Care Debate makes me think about is how politically divided we are, and some of the stupidities that come from this division. For one thing, people in power immediately like to try to change the rules to try to help continue themselves in power. It's not until there is a leadership change away from the party one supports that you start to have an ideological shift to limit the power of government. People do not care about too much government control if they support the party in power. It's like watching a sport referee make a bad call. You should always be against bad calls and for fairness, not only when it benefits your team. Often, once you pick a side you never question that side but fight fanatically for it. This reminds me of Robert E. Lee. He opposed slavery, or rather he professed to, but married into a slave-owning family and didn't immediately release his slaves, so that's opposition in mind only. He did say that slavery was not a valid reason to secede from the Union. He also opposed secession, but then followed his state, once they chose to secede. Once he had picked a side, he seems never to have revisited his initial idealogical objections to the war, but fought fanatically for it. When you see someone on the other side do this, you tend to vilify them as idealogically inconsistent, but when they are on your own side, you take whatever help you can give. You rarely see people that oppose one side's ideas stand up and fight against the specific ideas they oppose while staying loyal to their side. People tend to shut up and swallow their objections and fight on blindly for a side that they don't completely agree with.
In general, I resist the notion of a state with strong central control. They tend to get fanatical or boneheaded leaders from time to time, and you can't always rein them in, even in a democracy. Often the states with central control exhibit suicidal fanaticism coupled with patriotic fervor, which is a horrible combination to have. Our own fanaticism waxes and wanes with political winds.
In the case of the United States, our initial idealism has bred a nation with increasing diversity and complexity. As we get more powerful this diversity becomes broader. On some level, I see this as either something that will have to self-limit, or something that could be an inherent fatal flaw in our form of democracy.
One of our chief fears today is terrorism. Some say that they should be ignored, as their impact is too tiny to justify large sums of money spent trying to eliminate small bands of fanatics. Then I think of the mongol hordes of Genghis Khan and the barbarian hordes in Roman times. It is scary to think how easy it was for these small but highly motivated bands to take down large organized states. They didn't take over, they just destroyed and looted. It seems to me that the forces of chaos have always won out in the end, and that the pen is ultimately not mightier than the sword.
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