On Citizenship and Serfdom

Ken Blackwell has a great piece up over at The American Spectator on why we should vigorously reject government intrusion into health care on principle.

The more Americans learn about ObamaCare, the more concerns they have. Opposition to mandatory abortion funding is strong — up in the high 70-percent figures according to some reliable polls. This is not just pro-life sentiment speaking. Yes, the majority of Americans have told the Gallup organization they are pro-life. But this strong reaction goes even further. Millions of Americans who count themselves pro-choice are opposed to being forced themselves to pay for abortion-on-demand and are conscientiously opposed to forcing their pro-life neighbors to pay for it.

Mark Steyn has written powerfully about the entire question of government-provided health care. Steyn says even if costs could be contained by the new government takeover, and even if government health care did not lead inevitably to rationing — two conditions most analysts consider highly unlikely — Americans should still reject ObamaCare.

Why? Because, Steyn says, when the government takes over health care it fundamentally changes the relationship between citizen and state. People are no longer patients to their doctors or constituents to the government. They become supplicants. I will say it: they become serfs.

And let’s not gloss over that word. Serf. Think about just what it means for a moment.

a person in a condition of servitude, required to render services to a lord

a slave

I’m sure some will scoff at the idea that we would be in a position of servitude to our government. We already are, in ways, as a matter of fact. You do pay taxes, don’t you, to all levels of government, under threat of government-enforced penalty if you don’t?

Of course, in order to have and maintain a civilized society, there is a balance of power necessary between the government and the citizenry. A balance that must be guarded vigilantly and fiercely, lest it tip precariously in the direction of either anarchy or tyranny.

We who are concerned about fundamental issues of liberty and dependency, of life and death, must seek bipartisan support. When issues like abortion mandates-in-health-care and forced end-of-life-decision-making are raised, they have a strong resonance with millions of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. After all, everyone has a life. If you’d like to make the key decisions about yours without government mandates, join the resistance.

Or, as Thomas Jefferson said…

“Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows us that as a government grows, liberty decreases.”