Every now and then you come across an opinion piece written by someone on the Left that opens your eyes. Such was the case for a recent tome written for the Huffington Post by a gentleman named Evan Handler. Written in response to comments to an earlier essay, and in obvious haste and frustration, and so with considerable passion, his piece is an unvarnished look at the true thinking of the modern American Left, the so-called ‘progressives.’ Their vision of America is nothing short of radical and fundamental social and economic revolution – the total remaking of America – wrapped in a self-righteous package and delivered via government coercion. I encourage all of your to read it.
Handler’s article is entitled “America, I Love You. Americans, On the Other Hand…,” which is a sentiment that is both revealing and commonplace on the Left. Leftists like Handler love America, but as the title makes clear, he doesn’t love its people, we Americans. As the article further demonstrates, Leftists like Handler don’t much love its history, which they view mostly in terms of missed opportunities -the ugly realities being merely a train of quasi-imperialist human rights abuses driven by capitalist avarice. Handler, like most Leftists, doesn’t regard the present America with anything other than disdain – referring to our country as a racist, uncaring, international embarrassment.

Maybe Handler does love America, but if he doesn’t love its people, much of its past or its present, one has to wonder what part of America he and his Leftists do love? It is here I am reminded of a comment by a prominent American Leftist, who when asked what he loved about America, paused thoughtfully, and remarked revealingly, on his admiration for the American continent…as a land mass. Yes, the Leftists love America’s lakes, mountains, and rivers…it’s the rest of America they can’t stand.

The point isn’t to demonize Handler, but rather to demonstrate how much Handler and his allies daily demonize you; how much they regard you and the country you love as fundamentally misguided and in need of desperate and radical change based on their judgments about how the world “should be.” Thus we arrive at the formulaic heart of all progressive thinking: modern America is a nasty place, it needs to be changed by progressives into something they like better, and the government is the coercive means to that end. There is one more piece to the formula too, and it’s important when considering Handler’s profanity-laden article. Remember that the progressives see themselves as morally correct in their judgments, and that sense of self-righteousness must be fostered in order to motivate them to tackle the difficult task of radically reforming a change-resistant society. Thus, their viewpoint requires them both to believe in the righteousness of their cause and in the pure malevolence of those who oppose them. The result is that every effort is made at every opportunity to demonize those who stand in their way, hence his branding of all of us who don’t agree with him as ‘idiots’ and the introduction to the body of his article:
“First, to those opposed to any European-styled government subsidized health insurance option: I found every one of your arguments to be small-minded, selfish, fear-driven, ill-informed, self-serving, and — most crucially — detrimental to the long-term interests of the United States of America.”

As if someone so evidentially disdainful of everything uniquely American would somehow be an adequate or appropriate judge of what is in America’s best long-term interests.

Handler’s argument for why federally mandated and run health insurance is now essential, is contained in his earlier article, entitled, “Have You No Decency, Sir? At Long Last, Have You No Sense of Decency?” It is instructive to note that the title is a reference to Senator Joe McCarthy, a man the liberals love to hate, even 50 years after his death, and while they condemn his tactics, they employ them without hypocrisy at every step, in what columnist George Will has called ‘liberal McCarthyism,” – hence the notion that all those who disagree with President Obama must be motivated by racism.

With that basis in mind, let’s take a look at the substance of Handler’s arguments about why America requires a federal health insurance program, and here it is:

“…giving health care insurance to the most people possible is a very good thing to do. That’s why every other advanced nation on planet Earth does it — and most of them have far greater health than we enjoy, and spend much less on keeping it that way.”

That’s it folks. I’m afraid there’s not much more to it than that. Handler and his progressives think it’s ”a very good thing to do,” and that in the land of milk and honey – socialized Europe – it works just great…all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

How persuasive.

The rest of Handler’s article is devoted to excoriating Rep. Joe Wilson who (accurately) called attention to President Obama’s misleading assertions about health care benefits going to illegal aliens. As we now know, in addition to telling a whopper of a false anecdote about Otto Radditz, the man Obama claimed died as a result of being denied coverage by his evil insurer (he didn’t die, and his private insurance prolonged his life for 3 years), Obama claimed that the bill wouldn’t benefit non-citizen illegal aliens. We now know of course that like all government programs, enforcement is where the rubber meets the road; without an enforcement mechanism, limitations on beneficiaries are totally meaningless. It’s rather like saying that because robbery has been made illegal, it will never happen. Republicans in Congress tried to add amendments to the bill that would have provided for an enforcement mechanism (a requirement to show proof of U.S. citizenship), but the Democrats refused to include it knowing full-well that it would result in illegal aliens (an important future, and many say current voting block for the Democrats), being given access to health care that you and I pay for. In other words, break our laws by coming here illegally, stay as long as you like, don’t pay any income taxes, and get free education and health care on us as a reward. In the mind of the progressive, this is the world as it should be.

Of course, there we go being uncharitable again just like they say, but then it isn’t really charity were talking about is it? What Handler and his friends seek is not charitable giving – a voluntary act of compassion – it’s the government being empowered to take money you’ve earned and give it to someone Handler and his friends feel is more worthy – from each according to his ability, to each according to his need(citizen or not). It’s always easy to be “charitable” with someone else’s money isn’t it?

Unfortunately for Handler and his progressives, that inexplicable resistance they’re encountering on the part of the American people, belies an ideology grounded in a concept they cannot understand or accept – the American concept of a limited government. Handler implores his readers to have faith in the government: “I just encourage you all to look at it another way. Not how the government has failed you to this point, but at what the government might be offering now to improve upon the past.” It’s rather like hearing a recidivist wife-beater tell his spouse to have faith in his proposed pacifism. Handler’s naïve notion of government suddenly becoming responsible, efficient and self-limiting ignores 5,000 years of recorded human history with government, and is directly opposed both in spirit and substance to that pesky little document, the U.S. Constitution.

This of course is at the heart of the debate. For progressives, the Constitution is like a salad bar, a body of rules that you can pick and choose from, and even change as you like. Fundamental rights can be curtailed, interpreted, even abolished as long as it fits their concept of evolving standards of progressivism. For the rest of us, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, the guarantor of our sacred liberties, and a document with actual meaning. The Constitution is not some aspirational mission statement, it’s a contract between the people about what their government can and cannot do. If it’s anything else, it’s totally meaningless. What the Leftists can’t understand, or don’t want you to recognize, is that our limited form of government is the essence of America; it is a government of laws, not men, and it exists for a very limited purpose – to do those things a government must do, and nothing more.

Handler likes to point out that we are all immigrants to this land, but seems to decry the very American-ness that drove millions upon millions of us to come here. A land of unlimited opportunity thanks to a people who pride themselves on hard work and personal responsibility and a system of limited government that allows each man and woman to live his or her life as he or she sees fit; free to make the choices best for themselves and their families. Handler’s America is just the opposite. It is a land of government bureaucracy making choices for you with your money, and forcing you to conform to a lifestyle Handler approves of – it is the essence of the tyranny America was founded in opposition to. For Handler, government, big government, is absolutely essential – we are not only dependent upon it, but we are beholden to it. In his own words, “As corrupt and inefficient as your government is (and it clearly is), it’s the only thing keeping you alive moment to moment.”

One can imagine the likes of Kim Jong Il agreeing wholeheartedly.

Handler’s passion is to be admired, his motivations perhaps understood, but Handler’s methods, like those of so many zealous reformers before him, is not the road to a better society, but a path to bondage. No doubt like his political heroes, Handler makes the crucial error of prizing an elusive equality over an imperfect liberty. Handler would do well to remember the words of that famous European observer Alexis de Toqueville who wrote: “Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” Despite his contentions to the contrary, at some level Handler must know this. Thus, while he speaks glowingly of European progressivism, he and his European wife make their home here in America, and he makes his living writing and speaking his mind freely – a right still not wholly enjoyed by the people of modern, progressive, Europe.

To those who have considered whether federal health care is worth the risks, consider the essence of the argument being put before you: A political minority in the country, which currently holds a political majority in the government, wants to impose, through a party-line legislative procedure never before used, a mandate upon you to purchase health insurance from their government program, whether or not you want to…and will penalize you if you do not. The ask you to take this step willingly, despite the fact that our constitution does not authorize it, and despite the fact that it will place them in effective control of 13% of our entire economy. They ask you to do so on the strength of their assurances that this program will work well, despite the legendary inefficiency and profligate wastefulness of a government that they concede is corrupt. They ask you to believe that it will somehow cost us all far less than we’re paying now, while preserving the quality of health care that our free market gave to us – a quality not enjoyed by any nation with the kind of system they wish to adopt. Oh, and one more thing, they haven’t yet figured out how they’re going to pay for it, but this ruling elite knows it will somehow not add to the nearly insurmountable debt which they have already piled upon us.

The argument in favor of federal health care is more than preposterous, it’s a duplicitous fantasy. It is perpetrated by those who dislike the America we love, and it is designed to replace a system of liberty with one of equality – a system where the government is, quite literally, the only thing keeping you alive, moment to moment. We would do well to remember our obligation to those who went before us and who bequeathed to us the liberties we enjoy, as well as to those who will follow us, those who depend upon our courage, our intelligence and our love of liberty to provide them with theirs. We would do well to remember the words of Thomas Jefferson who declared, “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

So what are we to do? Surely there must be some answer to making our excellent health care a little more affordable? There is, and instinctively, every common-sense, liberty-loving American knows the answer. It’s the answer we have relied upon time and again, the answer that has transformed a frontier nation of destitute immigrants into the wealthiest, strongest, and most free nation ever to grace our world – let us each make our own choices! If you don’t want to buy health insurance, the federal government of the United States should not make you. If you live in California and want to buy insurance from a company in Florida, the federal government of the United States should not prevent you. If you and your neighbor want to pool your resources to gain greater bargaining power, Congress shouldn’t stop you. If your doctor doesn’t feel you need superfluous tests, he should be forced to administer them out of fear of lawsuits.

The answers to our health care dilemma are out there, and they don’t need more than 50 new government bureaucracies and nine hundred billion dollars of your money to be discovered. It merely requires each of us to remember our history as Americans, our obligations as citizens, and our God-given right to make our own choices as free people.