Most often our anti-government vitriol is directed at that easiest of targets: Congress. Who else could better personify the failures of government? They fight amongst themselves like children, we catch them taking bribes and selling influence, they talk a big game, spend big money and get nothing done. The thing is- a lot of this is nothing more than a caricature, and like all cartoonish representations, it only bears a resemblance to reality.
For all the flack we give them, despite the 5% of stuff we disagree on, Congress knows their stuff. American laws are used as templates in countries around the world. We take issue with the pork spending, and the tales of corruption, but they've done some stuff right. Look at our water and food regulations, rural electrification, the subsidy system that brought high speed internet across a vast country in a few years, when it could have taken decades. Our criminal justice system is the envy of the world.
Long story short, despite what the conservative end of Congress would have you believe, they get it right a lot more often than they get it wrong.
This is what health care reform is really about- our relationship with government. If meaningful reform passes, this Reagan-era notion that government can do absolutely nothing right, that we must push government away for everything, whether it helps us or hurts us, goes on trial.
We've been sold a narrative that government is a malevolent third party. But it's not. Our government is us. Done right, our congress and our president represents the will of the American people. The anti-government song is a charge intended to keep Americans from banding together to help one another at the expense of the rich and powerful.
Once regular Americans see someone fall ill with cancer, fight for their life and recover without having to fight an insurance company, that false tale, that government always, always fails is going to start sounding pretty hokey. When we see that the government stepped in and did not send grandma out on an ice floe, did not tell our sister to have an abortion to save money, and did not send us to a free clinic instead of our normal doctor, who's going to believe that they're going to screw it up next time?
That's why the right can't let it happen and why they will not give a single inch. For the right, this is not reigning in a single corrupt industry. It's a potential object lesson disproving a quarter century of lies.
The only thing better for the right than a complete failure of health care reform would be a reform of half-measures, watered down and confusing the point of absurdity. It looks like they might get their wish.
Comments are closed on this story.