The Patriot Post® · Don't Let Them Divert Your Attention

A fellow conservative recently suggested to me that we, and others, do some collective research on the ramifications of Obamacare for the average American family. Her hope is to produce an easily understood summary of some of the shared pain that the law will be inflicting on the citizenry.


I spent almost forty years as a political activist. Helped organize a couple of marches on Washington, delivered several petitions to both state and local legislators, wrote countless editorials and letters to the editor, delivered speeches, picketed outside the senate during the Clinton impeachment hearings, attended fund-raisers, protests, etc.

Early on, I felt that the average American had a real voice in what occurred in Washington, especially if he/she could team up with others of like mind and purpose. I don’t feel that way anymore. 

The infiltration of our public school system, and our institutions of ‘higher education’, by agenda-driven leftists is beyond frightening. Most of our college-bound young people are being exposed to blatant propaganda at every turn, and are no longer exposed to the details of their proud heritage. Very few of our young people today are at all familiar with the stories of courage, vision and sacrifice that were an integral part of the founding of their country. The magnificence of the concept of individual liberty that served as the catalyst for the American Revolution is no longer something that has been impressed upon their consciousness. There is a void where there used to be an intense sense of appreciation, and a duty to defend what was achieved for them by those who went before. 

The average American has become soft, unwilling to even recognize the extent of the loss of his liberties, let alone consider himself ready to do anything about it. We complain about our economic troubles, our loss of net worth, our job insecurity, and our uncertain financial future. And yet our understanding of the foundations of our republic is so lacking that we are incapable of recognizing that a robust economy means very little when it is not accompanied by the liberty to benefit from it.

Just one of countless examples: what good is a beautiful home (something that used to be an integral part of the American dream) when our government has the power to tax that home at any rate it sees fit, deny us the right to grow what we want on our land, disallow us to take down what trees we might want to remove, build any structure upon that land, disturb any puddles that some bureaucrat might define as a wetland, etc., without first tap dancing to their tune and jumping through their required number of bureaucratic hoops? The government likewise interferes in virtually every aspect of our economic lives – from what we pay for gasoline to how much of our accumulated wealth we are allowed to leave to our children.

Let’s use Obamacare, and our reaction to it, as a concrete example of the dilution of our appreciation of, and our willingness to defend, our liberties. 

Very few of us comprehend the effect that Obamacare will have on some of the most personal aspects of our lives. It makes me furious that an historically unparalleled usurpation of power on the part of this government has caused good, decent, intelligent, hard-working Americans to scramble around attempting to discern exactly how their government is brutalizing them, once again. It isn’t clear. We do not know. The 535 people who foisted this upon us do not know. We will learn about the ramifications once they hit us in the face, or if we are willing to spend our own time attempting to research what is contained in the 2,000+ page law.

I don’t want to learn how to deal with Obamacare. I want to try to educate people regarding its evil, and try to elect honest leadership who will rescind it. I have written many articles for our local newspapers on the crimes committed by this administration, and I talk to people on a daily basis regarding the criminality taking place in the White House and on Capitol Hill. In my world, the one-on-one interaction with others is what I see as my most effective tool. But I cannot spend time trying to learn how to deal with Obamacare, or trying to educate others on how to do so. That amounts to attempting to cope with an evil rather than attempting to eradicate it.

Americans don’t need to be told what services are going to be curtailed for them under this law. They don’t need to be educated regarding how much government healthcare is going to cost them. They need to be reminded (or perhaps told for the first time, if they are among the youngest generation of public-school-educated Americans) that their forebears pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, in order to save us from this kind of tyranny.

It is our lack of understanding of our rights under the U.S. Constitution that is writing our epitaph as a republic. It is the fact that, as Clint Eastwood said earlier this week, we own this country, and our leaders are our employees that has all but escaped our notice, because those of us who are paying attention are forever scrambling to figure out how the latest governmental assault is going to affect our lives. And those of us who are not paying attention will someday discover that ignorance is not bliss, not when a tyrant has used it, election after election, to insure that he wields irrevocable power.

The details of Obamacare are irrelevant. The fact that the law itself is criminal, under the magnificent blueprint for governance that our Founders so painstakingly authored for us (and John Roberts’ ruling be damned), should be the source of our outrage. And that outrage should be sufficient to insure that anyone who supported this bill is on notice that his days in Washington are numbered.