Health-Care, Democratic Socialists, and Single-Payer Goals ("I would like to sign the insurance companies out of existence with my pen")

Democracy is indispensable to socialism. V.I. Lenin
Democracy is the road to socialism. Karl Marx
The goal of socialism is communism. V.I. Lenin

 

Take note that as well Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution reads:

“The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government…”

I told my son to hold off on a school project until this apparent discrepancy is resolved. I am telling him that we do not have a democracy as his homework demands him write about, but a republic, and I am basing this on the Constitution and the authors/signers/early prognosticators of understanding of it (commonly referred to as “original intent”).

Our Founders had an opportunity to establish a democracy in America but chose not to. In fact, they made very clear that we were not – and never to become – a democracy:

• James Madison (fourth President, co-author of the Federalist Papers and the “father” of the Constitution) – “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general; been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
• John Adams (American political philosopher, first vice President and second President) – “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
• Benjamin Rush (signer of the Declaration) – “A simple democracy… is one of the greatest of evils.”
• Fisher Ames (American political thinker and leader of the federalists [he entered Harvard at twelve and graduated by sixteen], author of the House language for the First Amendment) – “A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will provide an eruption and carry desolation in their way.´ / “The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness [excessive license] which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be liberty.”
• Governor Morris (signer and penman of the Constitution) – “We have seen the tumult of democracy terminate… as [it has] everywhere terminated, in despotism…. Democracy! Savage and wild. Thou who wouldst bring down the virtous and wise to thy level of folly and guilt.”
• John Quincy Adams (sixth President, son of John Adams [see above]) – “The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.”
• Noah Webster (American educator and journalist as well as publishing the first dictionary) – “In democracy… there are commonly tumults and disorders….. therefore a pure democracy is generally a very bad government. It is often the most tyrannical government on earth.”
• John Witherspoon (signer of the Declaration of Independence) – “Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state – it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.”
• Zephaniah Swift (author of America’s first legal text) – “It may generally be remarked that the more a government [or state] resembles a pure democracy the more they abound with disorder and confusion.”

Bernie Sanders on Reconcilliation:

Make sure you listen to this whole screed. Socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders lays out how the Left plans to use reconciliation not just to achieve the government health care takeover, but several other big-ticket, big government items including child care and education.

I’ve transcribed a key passage:

(1:01) Host: To do all those things by majority rule in the Senate with 51 votes, do they have to be broken out as individual pieces of legislation?

Sanders: No, no, no, no. I think, to the best of my knowledge, you have lawyers working on this, you can put it all in one reconciliation bill, which at this point can only cover health care and education.

Host: Right. Fascinating.

Sanders: Now, the other thing is, once you do that, you can go through another reconciliation package, and so long as instructions are given to the relevant committees, you can include a lot more. So the next time around, after you pass health care and education, you could do, for example, creating millions of jobs, transforming our energy system…you can start investing in jobs in rebuilding our infrastructure…et cetera, et cetera.

Obama comforts House liberals: Don’t worry, this bill is just the beginning of what we’ll do with health care

Don’t look surprised. The left has been remarkably candid about this over the past year or two. Again and again and again and again and again and again and again they’ve warned people that the dream is bigger than universal coverage or even the public option.

Memo from The One to progressives: Keep the dream alive.

Obama argued to the group of progressive members that his health care reform bill should be looked at as the foundation of reform, that can be built on in the future. He asked them to help gather votes for the final health care battle and promised that as soon as the bill was signed into law, he’d continue to push to make it stronger. But in a matter of weeks, he stressed, he could sign into law legislation that would lead to 31 million new people being insured, including the woman who wrote him…

“He just said that the public option, something that he has supported along the way, is not something that we can pass. And he emphasized the fact that the decision now is between doing as much as we can do and doing nothing. That’s it. He thought the whole foundation thing — that this is definitely something we could be proud of, something we could build off [of],” said Schakowsky.

Woolsey told Obama that she’d be introducing legislation to create a public option and Obama said he encouraged the effort, according to Schakowsky.

Here’s an especially fun passage. Remember, Obama was self-described proponent of single-payer as recently as 2003 before deciding that it’s simply too impractical to pass. For now.

None of the members, including Kucinich, indicated that they would vote any differently this time around. “I think [Kucinich] left the meeting leaving the impression with the president that he’s a no-go,” said Schakowsky.

But, said one attendee, Obama pointed Kucinich toward single-payer language that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was able to get into the bill. Kucinich fought for an amendment that would allow states to adopt single-payer systems without getting sued by insurance companies. Obama told Kucinich that Sanders’s measure was similar but doesn’t kick in for several years. “He definitely wrote it down,” said one member of Kucinich, suggesting that he’d look into it.

I can’t decide between thinking that he’s saying this earnestly — if so, given the fallout in November, he’s going to be waiting awhile for ye olde public option — or just telling these idiots what they need to hear to vote for the much-despised Reid bill. This would, in theory, give him some cover even if he goes ahead and stabs them in the back by dropping reconciliation. After all, if this is just the first small step towards socialized medicine, who cares how small that step is? Pass anything. Just get a foot in the door so that you can swing it open in a decade or two when the wheel turns towards progressivism again.

Exit question: Think anyone in the White House press corps will lean on Gibbs tomorrow to explain what, specifically, this bill is a “foundation” for?

Are you getting it yet? This is not a giant conspiracy but like-mided statists getting together to try to make their worldview viable. Of course this worldview never works and always becomes "one of the greatest evils" (Benjamin Rush), but that has never stopped these people before.