Mandatory rights and other gov't oxymorons

A $1.5 trillion bill currently squirming its pork-laden way around in the House of Representatives would make health care a "right" of all Americans. Good news? Sure, if you're also envious of the "right" of the Cuban people to be forced to listen to Castro's speeches.

In addition to the goings-on in the House, a Senate committee has approved a preliminary health care bill. The Senate bill is named "Quality, Affordable Health Coverage for All Americans," and the pitch is that it would create a government-sponsored health program that would compete with the private sector.

For starters, the government "competing" with the private sector is like a monster that challenges you to a "fair fight" knowing full well that it can rip your arms off and beat you to death with your own limbs.

In Washington, D.C., every attempt is being made to convince Americans they can have two countries in one – a free-market nation and a socialist nation – and that consumers (you and me) can just pick which one we prefer to live in. Anyone who buys this can put the purchase right up there with the deed to their Colorado swampland and stock certificate for a majority share of the Brooklyn bridge. Besides, the government, though slow, crooked, stupid and misguided, isn't dumb – just in case the private sector could compete with their national health care plan, "Obamacare" will give Americans the choice between government health care and private insurance, and then simply outlaw private insurance.

The "Quality, Affordable Health Coverage for All Americans" (it started out on a local level as "Quality, Affordable Coverage in Kansas" but QUACK, though an appropriate acronym for this particular bill, didn't quite make the cut) bill requires every American to carry health insurance. So there it is – health care is a right, and it will be mandatory. My question, simply put, is this: What kind of a "right" is mandatory, and if you don't exercise that right you can be punished with fines and/or jail? Some "right"!

Let's try Congress and Obama-style logic, or lack thereof, on other rights and see if it makes sense. For example, you have the "right" to peaceful assembly. Would we still consider this to be a "right" if the government said that every American must participate in peaceful assembly, and you will assemble in the town square at noon every day to view your daily re-education film on the virtues of hope and change or else face jail time, fines or both? For too many, the answer is "yes."

But all is right with the world, because if the Democrats get their way, we'll all be equally ill and broke – and "fairness" is what the New Hope is all about. One thing I agreed with John McCain about during the campaign was, if the American medical system is run by the government, where will Canadians go for their health care? So at the very least the government should consider the needs of our friends to the north.

Here's the maddening part about any plan for national health care, though hardly unexpected: American politicians are so selfless that they won't even include themselves as recipients of this glorious health care "right" they're being so gracious as to try and bless the rest of us with. Those people are always giving something back, aren't they? How noble.

Rep. John Fleming has an amendment that would require lawmakers in Washington to enroll in any government-run health plan it decides is best, not to mention mandatory, for the rest of us. Sign the petition here. There's no better way to ensure that idiotic laws don't get passed than by making Congress know it'll have to obey them.

It's more than a little perplexing how all those people who cried "fascist" at the thought that George W. Bush might be tapping their phones and listening to them order a pizza are the same ones who have no problem whatsoever not only handing the Obama administration all their medical records – but don't even mind having them taken from them under the guise of it being their "right" as a free people. Such dreams of nirvana always evolve into totalitarian nightmares – at which point Congress and Obama will declare "totalitarian nightmares" to be a mandatory right of all Americans.