Is Revolution Inevitable?

I have been feeling compelled recently to discuss several issues that are relevant to our lives today.  I will start with a perspective on the current health care legislation to springboard into my thoughts on what seem to be some underlying issues we have long overlooked that have contributed to where we are today.

Simply put, the current legislation needs to be defeated for several reasons, which I am sure we are all aware of by now.  They are common sense and illustrate the points that will follow.  I will list a few of them. 


1.  Financial Disaster.  A simple principle we've all seem to have forgotten is don't spend more than you make.  This legislation not only spends more than it makes, it does so with math that wouldn't pass the third grade.  Who decided comparing ten years of income with six years of expenses was a sound way to balance the budget?  No wonder our country is owned by China.

2.  Prior History.  If you give a kid 10 bucks and tell him to buy shoes for school and he spends it all on candy, you'd call that immature.  If you give him ten more bucks and he does it again, you'd call that rebellious.  If he comes to you again and says he's gonna buy shoes this time, really, you'd tell him to take a hike.  Congress has never paid for a social program it has started.  Now it wants to start another one that dwarfs the prior ones in size, AND pretends that it will pay for the latest one with funds from the first ones, which already have a negative account.  And then it tells us not to worry, it will really work this time.  The kids in the Congress are playing with our money.  It's time we tell them no.

3.  Overreaching Power.  Citizens of the United States cannot be criminally or otherwise penalized for choosing not to purchase a product or service.  If they are, they no longer live in a free society.

4.  Perpetuation of a Welfare State.  When the government insists on giving some of its citizens something without requiring anything of them in return, the rest of its citizens are forced to pay for the poor choices of others.  As the government expands it reach to accommodate more and more of it's citizens problems instead of requiring them to contribute to the solution, it strips the right and the motivation for personal responsibility from all of its citizens.  The more money it demands from its citizens to implement its programs, the less control they have over the profit of their own labor, and the more the society trends toward a collective state with a way of life dictated by those in power.  Utopia is an unsustainable ideal.

The above are strong reasons to defeat this bill.  However, even were all of these reasons absent, the bill should be defeated because it promotes the devaluing of life as well as the restriction of dissent against that devaluation of life.  It does this in the following ways.

1.  Expands funding for abortion through massive increase of funds to Planned Parenthood and subsidies to private insurance plans that contain abortion coverage.  For those who argue this is not the case, let me pose a simple question:  If this were not the intent of the bill's architects, why do they refuse to include language in the bill explicitly excluding abortion funding?  The answer is simple.  They want abortion coverage included in the bill. 

As an illustration, if I were to consider buying a car from you and you told me you replaced the timing belt and water pump, I would ask to see the receipts.  If you told me you had the receipts but you didn't want to show them to me, what would that tell me?  It would tell me you were lying, and I'd need to find another car to purchase.  If something looks like a monkey, and smells like a monkey, and acts like a monkey, well, it's probably a safe bet that it actually IS a monkey.

2.  Has a lack of conscience protections for healthcare workers other than doctors who oppose abortion.  So workers are being forced to choose between an immoral act and their jobs.  This is an incredibly coercive misuse of power, and should not be allowed.

For these reasons, we should pray heartily for the bill's defeat.  If it passes, we must also seriously consider our response to it's passage.  In the beginning of our country, revolution was stoked by the idea of taxation without representation.  Citizens were being told by their government what to do with their money with no right to disagree.  Ironically we are in increasingly similar circumstances with the leaders of our country.  Although we have a representative form of government in structure, those who claim to represent us are increasingly arrogant and unaccountable in the use of their political power.  They are shaping the future of our country and our lives without us.  This is unacceptable, and it is the right of every citizen to not only protest, but also to remove from power those who are no longer acting on behalf of the peoples' voice.

Is revolution inevitable?  It depends on what you mean by revolution, but what I mean by it is that we have relinquished too much power to the federal government and must regain our voice in the political process.  First, by actually interacting with our leaders, and second, by holding our leaders accountable to a path of government that is morally and fiscally responsible, that increases the personal responsibility of individual citizens and decreases dependence on the government for the sustenance of our lives.  If we demand these things and there is no response, then I would say that yes, revolution by every definition is inevitable, and the United States of America as we know it will be no more.

In my next post, I want to discuss underlying problems to the symptoms of government we are now experiencing, as well as some solutions to these problems such as a balanced budget amendment to the constitution, the role of the individual in society, etc.  Until then pray for the defeat of the current healthcare bill, and pray for the instigation of healthcare legislation that actually makes sense and is morally and financially sound.