Health Care is a "Moral Issue"
NewsHour had a story the other night in which it noted that universal health care for children is being framed as a moral issue.
I agree, it is a moral issue: it is immoral for the federal government to pay for or otherwise control health care for kids.
The only way to do this is to violate our 10th Amendment rights. The only way to do that without amending the Constitution is to say that the Constitution does not have to be followed if we "outgrow" it or if the people simply don't want to. And there is no way to do that and still preserve our other Constitutional rights.
To favor federal spending on social programs, without amending the Constitution to allow it, is to say that the government is not obligated to recognize our Constitutional rights, and I firmly believe that is immoral.
And the anti-intellectualism in this debate is terrifying to me. People who stand up on stage and say the choice is between demolishing our Constitutional rights, or hating children enough to want them to go without health care. There are other choices: states can do it, and private businesses and charities can do it.
But not the federal government, not unless you amend the Constitution, because otherwise you are saying we effectively have no rights, including the right to free speech that some of you will exercise here to tell me that I'm an idiot. The right you're exercising to rip me a new one has no firm legal protection according to any philosophy that says the federal government can fund universal health care for children.
I agree, it is a moral issue: it is immoral for the federal government to pay for or otherwise control health care for kids.
The only way to do this is to violate our 10th Amendment rights. The only way to do that without amending the Constitution is to say that the Constitution does not have to be followed if we "outgrow" it or if the people simply don't want to. And there is no way to do that and still preserve our other Constitutional rights.
To favor federal spending on social programs, without amending the Constitution to allow it, is to say that the government is not obligated to recognize our Constitutional rights, and I firmly believe that is immoral.
And the anti-intellectualism in this debate is terrifying to me. People who stand up on stage and say the choice is between demolishing our Constitutional rights, or hating children enough to want them to go without health care. There are other choices: states can do it, and private businesses and charities can do it.
But not the federal government, not unless you amend the Constitution, because otherwise you are saying we effectively have no rights, including the right to free speech that some of you will exercise here to tell me that I'm an idiot. The right you're exercising to rip me a new one has no firm legal protection according to any philosophy that says the federal government can fund universal health care for children.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
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