Friday, July 17, 2009

What do You Think?

I'm quite tired of the discussions on the news about health care. I haven't heard anyone who is supposedly reporting the news bring up the question, "Where in the Constitution does it say that citizens of the United States are 'entitled' to health care or any other social benefit program?"

I'm 60 and, according to all those who are steeped in the social programs dogma, so in five years I should be happy to have the government take care of me for the rest of my life, but I'm not. Those who founded this country were not just spouting words when they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, to secure the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for themselves and their postereity. However, here is where the rub is.

Many people want to have their cake and eat it too. Saying they want liberty and yet want the government to supply them with state run health care, or retirement, or housing, or food. If they want liberty, they have to accept the unalienable RESPONSIBILITY that goes along with unalienable rights! I realize that my position means that I might die before I really want to, but the Constitution doesn't guarantee me longevity beyond my natural lifespan by paying for my medication, health care, or even a stay in a nursing home for my last few years. So what makes so many Americans shout that they want liberty, but at the same time they are pleading with their Congressmen to provide everything for them that they should be procuring for themselves? Where's the liberty in that?

Patrick Henry once said, "Give me liberty or give me death." Well I think that, just like Patrick Henry, we should strive for the former and keep on striving for it until the latter happens. When you have liberty, your quality of life will be more wholesome and so when death comes, no matter what age it might be, it will be a time of rejoicing because you have maintianed liberty throughout it, you have to have fought a good fight, you have finished your course, and you have kept the faith. Then you will truly have liberty--liberty from offense toward God or man. What more can you ask for?