Barak Obama, as far as I can tell (which knowledge comes from scanning his book for about half an hour at Costco) is a good man, and a genuine Christian. From his stump speech, he is much more optimistic about the potential of Americanism than I am but there are quite a few things that he stands for that have me enthused. One of them is the fact that he has now become the third Democratic candidate, following Edwards and Clinton, to state his intention to form some kind of national health care program. As he sets out his initial ideas in a recent speech, he does a good job of quickly getting down to the major issues in this abysmal stain on the mythical American love feast. He is a tremendous rhetor, and that comes across even in the text version. Although I think his reasoning isn’t as solid as it could be at some points, I think he is right on in articulating the gist of what our primary concern should be in the issue:
“…the skeptics tell us that reform is too costly, too risky, too impossible for America. Well the skeptics must be living somewhere else. Because when you see what the health care crisis is doing to our families, to our economy, to our country, you realize that caution is what’s costly. Inaction is what’s risky. Doing nothing is what’s impossible when it comes to health care in America.”
I remain a political conservative in many ways, including fiscal matters. However, my mind has been changing on this issue, and it’s becoming clear to me that I have to depart from the Republicans here. Allow me just one statistic: 9 million children in America today are living with out health care. Of course, there remains the problem of impersonalism in health care that cannot be addressed on a national level. But in response to the one reality of the uninsured, here are a few theses that seem to form the basis of my recent repentance:
1. The issue facing us in the health care problem is not whether we are able to provide health coverage, but whether our philosophical ideals allow for it. A question: If someone has the goods of this world, and sees his brother in need, and closes his heart to him, refusing to share those goods, how then can God’s love abide in him?” (1 John 3.17).
2. A “hands-on” policy by the government in the area of health-care would be an “exception” to a Laissez-faire economic rule only if health-care was determined to be the sort of scenario that economic policies apply to, i.e. the refining of oil, the manufacturing of window-fans, etc.
3. It cannot be assumed that economic interests should be given the greatest weight when crafting national policy simply because a given scenario happens to involve monetary interests.
4. To say that “the business of America is business” assumes that the interests of business are conflate with the health of the nation (which is basically the utilitarian idea that our goals are met if healthy business means more money for more people). This is a faulty assumption.
5. A fundamental principle of conservatism is that the governments job is to foster free participation in society. In most cases this means getting out of the way. In cases, however, where there exist structures in opposition to the freedom of people (read: systems of health care provision that exclude the people who can’t afford it), the government should act to remove them. (Perhaps I could offer some theses at another juncture on why I do not feel this opposition should include positive action, and not negative, coercive action).
6. Our concern must be for actual lives, and not primarily for potential lives. Thought and planning, of course, must be addressed to the care and provision for potential, future lives, but then only as a surplus of care, as a supercession of care for actual lives. When actual lives are sacrificed as an investment for potential lives, our entire efforts become futile and self-defeating, as it is reasonable to assume that we wouldn’t change such a practice when those potential lives became actual (think about it). This means that even if non-intervention in the suffering 9 million uninsured children might perhaps contribute to the system’s becoming stronger and more efficient for a future generation, this does not factor in deciding whether we will make a way to care for them right now.
A very thoughtful post. I hope that this is merely the first of many. You self identify as a conservative, yet many of your points put you in what seems to be fundamental disagreement with the Republican Party as it now stands. Those two, Republican and conservative, while they are often clumped together in these here times, are not necessarily synonymous. Perhaps your political views lie outside the representation of the two major parties?
Thanks for the comment, Chris. I agree that my views seem to be in pretty serious disagreement with Republicans. I don’t think the party has ever really lived up to it’s conservative ideals, even under Reagan, since there especially military spending stands as the huge, hypocritical loophole in the ideal of restrained government. And Bush seems to have dispensed with any ideal of restrained government whatsoever. What I see as a governing norm for government activity is this: the primary interest for government is stewarding the structures of society in such a way that the best allow for the free participation of all members. This means intervention in some areas, and withdrawal in others. And so I am not a libertarian, since sometimes government non-intervention actually restrains the freedom of the oppressed. And I guess this makes for little political kinship in the democratic party or the republican.
Barak’s cool as political cantidates come. But, like yourself Adam, I just don’t see much rationale for the classic forms of participation in American government. Sometimes I feel like maybe I should just let the empire do its thing, and make sure I’m serving the poor as best I can where I live.
Anyways, keep up the posts.
Only 2 Democratic candidates for president have put forth detailed plans for universal health care: 1)Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) who plans to expand Medicare until it covers everyone and to take the profit out of healthcare and make it a right. 2) Former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) who plans to phase out private insurance and employer coverage as he phases in universal health care over 4 years.
Obama has promised universal healthcare, but been very vague about how he will achieve this. Sen. Clinton is even vaguer, but seems stuck in the market-based approach she pioneered in the ’90s which left millions uninsured, lowered the quality of healthcare, and created billions for HMOs. I would hope that Obama would ignore Clinton’s ideas and focus on those of Kucinich and Edwards since they have done real preparation–including methods to pay for it.