By KEITH KOFFLER |
9/4/13 5:03 AM EDT Keith publishes the White House Dossier, daily. In it he keeps track of the daily dealings of Obama - a very important source of information if knowledge about out government still means anything - blog editor.
It’s right in front of us, and yet somehow beneath the
radar.
President Barack Obama has whipped up a novel new strategy
for expanding government’s control over our lives and enlarging the power of
the executive branch. The reason it’s so hard to see is that ironically enough
— actually, it’s almost hilarious — he’s taking portions [of] our freedom by
offering to expand our “rights.”
You and I now have, Obama asserted, the right to health
insurance. Not just the increased access to coverage afforded by Obamacare, but
the right to it. Life, liberty, and managed care.
But that’s not all. This year, Obama has been suggesting
that you also have the right to go to college, to place your kids in
early-childhood education classes – that is, daycare – and even the right to
join the middle class as long as you put in some effort.
Here’s what Obama isn’t telling you: When you start turning
desirable commodities into fundamental rights, you must, by definition, have
more government, because only government can guarantee “rights.”
And you know what that means: More red tape, more bureaucracy,
more rules, and of course more policing, for you cannot be denied your
“rights.” Choice is eventually removed from the equation, because federally
written standards must apply to ensure that no one’s rights are being abused or
denied.
This is not what America is about. The founders, in the
Constitution and its Bill of Rights, specifically do not guarantee pleasant
outcomes. Seeking to limit government and preserve freedom, the rights they
provided — like the rights to life, liberty, and to safeguard your property —
guarantee only the means to achieve desired ends and create a successful life.
Liberals have always made it their priority to proffer the
ends as well as the means. But the argument has generally been that benefits
are badly needed or richly deserved. Even “entitlements” like Medicare and
Social Security, which many consider a “right,” are at least cast as piggy
banks in which you drop coins all your life and then finally break open at age
65. (They don’t actually work like this – current workers in fact fund current
retirees – but that’s how the programs are at least sold.)
What Obama is doing, if he gets away with it, is
supercharging the perceived need for government largesse and protection by
casting liberal policies as the answer to needs you were born to have
fulfilled.
“I’m going to keep doing everything in my power to make sure
this law works as it’s supposed to,” the president said of Obamacare during a
weekly address broadcast Aug. 17. “Because in the United States of America, health
insurance isn’t a privilege – it is your right. And we’re going to keep it that
way.”
So Republicans trying to repeal Obamacare and its guarantee
of universal coverage are not just trying to reverse bad policy, they’re
infringing on your rights. And Obama is therefore not merely permitted to take
extraordinary steps to protect Obamacare; he’s obligated to.
Insurers must be transformed into government utilities,
offering standardized packages to guarantee that subsidiary rights – to birth
control pills and so forth – are included in your coverage.
And if health insurance is a right, why are we leaving it to
the private sector at all? Is it not incumbent upon government to lead us
eventually to the single-payer promised land that lies just over the Obamacare
mountaintop?
Other rights are on the way.
The president laid it on thick during a bus tour last week
about guaranteeing a college education for all.
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