America the institutionalized?

So America is descending on Washington DC this morning trying with all it’s might to stop Obama and the Congress from passing the “health care reform bill.”

Of course there is another part of America that is rooting the president on. They see this as a chance to shut the Tea Partiers up and to achieve the Holy Grail for Democrats, a nationalized health care program.

Of course no one really knows what is in this bill. In The Hill yesterday it was reported that the IRS is given broad new powers to withhold refunds if people choose not to carry health insurance.

What else is in this monstrosity? I fear the answer to this question. The state is on the march and the individual is digging in his heals. After reading the comments at the end of the piece in The Hill the Dems had better think about how far they are willing to push people. Folks are angry.

There is no turning back, and everyone knows this. Lots of people are unhappy with healthcare as it is now, including many of the Tea Partiers. But they are even more unhappy with the expansion of the state into every corner of their lives. This is what people on the left don’t understand. Actually they may understand, they just don’t care.

In their eyes the Tea Party people are just selfish. They have health insurance and want to deny health insurance to the needy.

No. What we reject is the leviathan of the state which is the biggest political issue of all. For 3 generations we have watched our rights eroded away by a relentless state.

There was a time, not long ago, when the only interaction the average person had with the federal government was when they went to the post office.

What some see as progressivism, the increased expansion of the welfare state, is in fact seen by many others as a decent into a new dark age. These two perspectives are fundamentally divergent and how we as a society come to terms with this schism will be one of the defining themes of the next decade. I don’t see the Tea Party people backing down because they know that if they back down now, the game is lost. But the statists are definitely not going to back down either. In fact they see the (what they perceive as) reactionary Tea Partiers as little more than a blip on the path toward a bright and shining future.

Often when downsizing of the state, and a renewed assertion of the individual, is discussed even within anti-state circles, such ideas are dismissed as tilting at windmills. If there is anything to be learned from the past decade it is that what we thought would always be can change in the blink of an eye.

Rolling back the state is very possible. We can have a smaller government. We can have lower taxes. We can end the wars. We can curtail the intrusion of the state into our personal lives. We can be free. Forget about the box you have lived in for your entire life. Think in new ways.

Be respectful of those who disagree with you. Beat their ideas with liberty. Liberty for the individual is the highest goal of humanity as far as I can see, and when explained in a thoughtful way, minds can be changed.

Freedom is good. Slavery is bad. Most people will agree with this but you need to show them that they can flourish in a free society. Most people who are used to being taken care of fear their freedom. In a sense they are institutionalized.

Think of the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, when the old man is finally released from prison, he hangs himself in the halfway house because he fears the open vistas beyond the prison walls. So too do many very good people fear the freedom that comes with a smaller state. This is the essence of the current societal battle and one that freedom lovers have no option but to win.