Resistiéndose al Leviatán obamita

After Congress approved its unpopular health care reform bill in a drama-filled finale, the dust is apparently settling down – or rather, the big dogfight has been postponed until November. Nonetheless, all the commotion must have left some wondering if it was just much ado about nothing. After all, if what the Obama administration and the Democrats wanted was to give the people a new right, what are so many people complaining about, for heaven’s sake?!

 

On the one hand, those happy with the recently approved law probably think that they just got a free and well deserved lunch, courtesy of the Government – it was about time, actually. On the other hand, those protesting against the law probably believe that it’s not the Government’s role to provide free lunches because the citizens ultimately have to pick up the tab – payable in more taxes and less freedom.

 

We are witnessing one more edition of the contentious battle for control between the individual vs. the government. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton embodied this division of opinion about the suitable place for the individual and government since the beginnings of the American republic. The reification of the epic struggle for control comes in different wrappings and names and it’s contended in different areas of human action, but it boils down to a simple zero-sum game: one side’s gain is the other side’s loss. The individual is in a permanent struggle against the ever-power-hungry Leviathan, which adroitly uses time-tested artifices (e.g. legislation and taxation) to increase its puissance. Austrian economist and social philosopher Ludwig von Mises put it more poetically: “The essential characteristic of Western civilization… is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders.”

 

According to most media reports, Europe, the most government-domesticated branch of Western civilization, doesn’t seem to understand why individualistic America refuses to have a government-run health care system just like the existing ones in the Old Continent. Europeans see health care as one more of the sacred entitlements provided by the Nanny State – although it’s driving them to bankruptcy. Entitlements are the drugs that appease our innate yearning for freedom from government. Via these government programs, gradually and inadvertently, citizens relinquish their individual freedom in favor of the concept of group rights. For Europeans – and their American progressive cousins – it’s simply incomprehensible that anyone should be protesting in America’s streets because the people don’t want to depend on the government for their health care choices. For most Americans, Obamacare has become synonymous with big government.

 

Voters choose leaders who, in broad strokes, share their ideology because these leaders’ ideas propound a specific path to political action. Once elected, the leaders must take and execute what they consider the right measures towards achieving the promised objectives. That’s the political process in a nutshell and voters should never disregard the important role they play in it; elections have consequences because they set the path through which our leaders will take us all. Thus, voters had it coming with Barack Obama – the most liberal senator in the U.S. Congress. He’s never made it a secret that he’s a staunch progressive and, as such, he’s a collectivist, a believer in big government. Obama’s record and relationships did speak volumes about the man and his vision for the country, but the Bush-weary, financially-panicked nation was too enthralled with the charismatic senator from Chicago whose oratory prowess helped people forget to ask for the specifics about the promised change.  

 

His election marked the start of a new progressive era in the 21^st century and a departure from Reaganite orthodoxy towards the application of a more statist paradigm. Wrapped in a don’t-waste-a-good-crisis mantle to push his leftist agenda, Mr. Obama has applied himself with gusto to the task by presiding over an unparalleled expansion of government power in the short span of just one year: Stimulus packages, more taxes and mandates, more stifling regulation, executive pay restrictions, the nationalization of General Motors and Chrysler, the takeover of the student loan program, the former and the latest intervention in the housing mortgage market, the impending financial-regulatory reform, the current push to remake the labor law system, and many other interventionist moves like the attempt to revive intrusive cap-and-trade legislation. Mr. Obama’s ongoing government expansion could make FDR blush. His new health care law alone creates 159 (!) new government agencies to regulate insurance and medical services and will turn the health insurance business sector into a bureaucracy that works for the government. Yet the scariest feature is undoubtedly the provision that expands the power of the IRS to intrude upon people’s lives in the quest for a redistributionist fantasy. To quote businessman Steve Forbes; “Marx would be very impressed.”

 

Mr. Obama is betting the farm on his collectivist gamble to reshape individualistic America into a less exceptional and more European-styled society. Nonetheless, his efforts are already encountering stiff resistance since the culture of self-reliance and individualism is deeply rooted in the American ethos as part of the Anglo-American approach in which individuals take precedence over the interest of groups and reject government interventionism. Liberty was at the heart of the Founders’ visionary plans for the new nation and is deeply entrenched in all aspects of American life. That’s why you see people protesting to defend themselves against what they see as a massive transfer of government power to the detriment of their freedoms. It’s the sign of a living, vibrant society that refuses to be silently run over by the magnetic post-American president’s progressive steamroller.

 

 

©2010 Miryam Lindberg