the right thing
On March 21, 2010, the United States Congress passed a comprehensive health care reform bill. The passage of the bill was trumpeted by one side of the aisle as a great victory, while the other side claims a travesty. According to the NY Times, John Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, responded with, “The American people are angry,” Mr. Boehner said. “This body moves forward against their will. Shame on us.”
Because our country operates largely on a “majority rules” system, it is easy for Americans to forget that the majority isn’t always right. What makes our system great is that a majority of our leaders have been willing to stand up for the rights of the minority. Doing the right thing, the moral thing, to protect the rights of all Americans is a hard choice and often has hard consequences.
America has been at this crossroad before. In 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Jefferson Davis’s decried the “measure of which several millions of human beings of an inferior race, peaceful and contented laborers in their sphere, are doomed to extermination” (Harper’s Weekly, January 31, 1863). Whereas the ridiculous nature of this statement prevents it from receiving any credibility from today’s readers, other pro-slavery arguments echo the cries of health care opponents. One of the primary arguments for keeping slavery was that abolishing it would cause an economic collapse; the United States simply couldn’t afford to do away with slavery and still be financially sound. Luckily for us, the willingness of Congress and a president to do the right thing, the moral thing, triumphed.
Our history is filled with great legislation which protects the rights of all, despite the objections of many. Women didn’t need the vote, it was argued, because they “have a vast indirect influence through their menfolk on the politics of this country.” Separate was once considered by the government to be equal. Defenders of our constitution talk about our inalienable rights to life and liberty – bearing arms, education, freedom of speech - and expect our courts and congress to pass legislation which protects those rights. The right to health care is no exception.
There is no doubt that the current Health Overhaul Bill isn’t perfect, but the bottom line is that it was the right thing to do. Just like IDEA, No Child Left Behind or Social Security (which Columbia University professor Alan Brinkley points out was “also deeply flawed at its creation but gradually improved over several decades to become the most successful social legislation of the 20th century”) this current bill is a starting point and begins to fill a tragic gap in the fabric of our country – lack of affordable health care for all.
So, despite the cries of Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart that this bill is “a decisive step in the weakening of the United States,” or Representative Virginia Foxx, that it’s “one of the most offensive pieces of social engineering legislation in the history of the United States,” it’s time for Americans to stop and place this latest “social engineering” in the big picture of our country’s great history. We’ve heard these arguments before and gotten past them in order to do the right thing. Americans owe it to ourselves to stand behind this latest civil rights legislation. Whether Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, the fact remains that, in the words of our President, “In the end what this day represents is another stone firmly laid in the foundation of the American dream. Tonight, we answered the call of history as so many generations of Americans have before us. When faced with crisis, we did not shrink from our challenges. We overcame them. We did not avoid our responsibilities, we embraced it. We did not fear our future, we shaped it.”
Because our country operates largely on a “majority rules” system, it is easy for Americans to forget that the majority isn’t always right. What makes our system great is that a majority of our leaders have been willing to stand up for the rights of the minority. Doing the right thing, the moral thing, to protect the rights of all Americans is a hard choice and often has hard consequences.
America has been at this crossroad before. In 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Jefferson Davis’s decried the “measure of which several millions of human beings of an inferior race, peaceful and contented laborers in their sphere, are doomed to extermination” (Harper’s Weekly, January 31, 1863). Whereas the ridiculous nature of this statement prevents it from receiving any credibility from today’s readers, other pro-slavery arguments echo the cries of health care opponents. One of the primary arguments for keeping slavery was that abolishing it would cause an economic collapse; the United States simply couldn’t afford to do away with slavery and still be financially sound. Luckily for us, the willingness of Congress and a president to do the right thing, the moral thing, triumphed.
Our history is filled with great legislation which protects the rights of all, despite the objections of many. Women didn’t need the vote, it was argued, because they “have a vast indirect influence through their menfolk on the politics of this country.” Separate was once considered by the government to be equal. Defenders of our constitution talk about our inalienable rights to life and liberty – bearing arms, education, freedom of speech - and expect our courts and congress to pass legislation which protects those rights. The right to health care is no exception.
There is no doubt that the current Health Overhaul Bill isn’t perfect, but the bottom line is that it was the right thing to do. Just like IDEA, No Child Left Behind or Social Security (which Columbia University professor Alan Brinkley points out was “also deeply flawed at its creation but gradually improved over several decades to become the most successful social legislation of the 20th century”) this current bill is a starting point and begins to fill a tragic gap in the fabric of our country – lack of affordable health care for all.
So, despite the cries of Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart that this bill is “a decisive step in the weakening of the United States,” or Representative Virginia Foxx, that it’s “one of the most offensive pieces of social engineering legislation in the history of the United States,” it’s time for Americans to stop and place this latest “social engineering” in the big picture of our country’s great history. We’ve heard these arguments before and gotten past them in order to do the right thing. Americans owe it to ourselves to stand behind this latest civil rights legislation. Whether Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, the fact remains that, in the words of our President, “In the end what this day represents is another stone firmly laid in the foundation of the American dream. Tonight, we answered the call of history as so many generations of Americans have before us. When faced with crisis, we did not shrink from our challenges. We overcame them. We did not avoid our responsibilities, we embraced it. We did not fear our future, we shaped it.”
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