by Leslee Kulba

“This is exciting!” At least, that's the catch phrase used by
Progressives to get buy-in for government-growing schemes. “This is
exciting!” because this holiday season, Americans are walking on
eggshells. Word at 2:00 am Monday morning is that the Senate can do no
more damage until Tuesday. Republicans can prolong the agony until
Christmas, whereas Democrats would just as soon deliver liberty a
decisive blow and put it out of its misery. Work on a compromise bill is
expected to start December 26, and the president may get his very own
healthcare industry tied in a neat little bow by the end of the year.

Sixteen inches of snow couldn't stop the Senate from breaking the
sabbaths of Judeo-Christian legislators to advance the forcing of the
2000-page bill on Americans who don't want it. No realist is going to
suppose he has had time to perform due diligence on all the bill
proposes, and only Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid knows for sure what
is included was included in all his back-room deals. Parliamentary
procedures have been broken; the Constitution is only used for laughs;
and the Democrats prevented a filibuster with the unconventional
seatings of Arlen Specter, Al Franken, and Paul Kirk.

Congress – instead of tending to its Constitutionally proscribed
function of defending freedom – is seeking to force on law-abiding
citizens legislation that is expected to create an economic avalanche
toward nationalized healthcare. Those who don't close their eyes to
history are called alarmists. World governments have almost no history
of willfully returning power to the people; and with seeming unlimited
powers of taxing, borrowing, and printing, government can always
outcompete the private sector. Committing to the first step on this
slippery slope, we'll eventually find our bodies are owned by the state,
and pre-determined legislation weighs more in (evidently criminal)
matters of treatment than how one feels or what one's religious beliefs are.

The bill is said to extend coverage to 30 million Americans, as if it
contains personal checks for 30 million Americans. It is supposed to
prevent people from dying with a magic wand called government, but the
people aren't convinced. Nothing is said about creative workarounds for
incentives and (of course unintended) disincentives. In the end, though,
details don't matter. That Congress wants to use its traditional powers
and powers it is making up as it goes along to vote itself control over
the healthcare industry is wholesale legislative piracy. Control of the
country's automotive industry and financial institutions should be
enough to satisfy any megalomaniacal tyrant's lust for fortune and fame.
But some kids need more toys so they can abuse what's on the top and
forget what's on the bottom of the pile. Christmas is the time Americans
lavish heaps of toys on spoiled brats. Christmas is also time for
another great tradition: catching people off guard.

Parallels & Antiparallels

In 1775, all it took was one Paul Revere to get on his horse and shout
through the night, “The British are coming!” In 2004, Iran declared war
on the United States. It was a Sunday. All the radio stations were on
automatic, broadcasting pre-recorded music and re-airing best-ofs. The
few radio stations with live on-air personalities, like WZLS, were
relying on news sources that were running on automatic. Effective
communications are made worse by public information specialists who
study damage control as an art. They know when mass media sleeps, and so
they can minimize backlash by dropping political bombs right before
everybody goes home. By Monday, everything will be over, done, and stale.

Parallels and antiparallels, stressing the need for eternal vigilance,
can be drawn between the eve of this Christmas and that of 1776. Both
years were marked by a battle for liberty in this land. Both years, only
a small percentage of the population really cared, and those that did
felt fiercely the need for one nation of people to coexist sharing the
sovereignty of a live-and-let-live diversity of opinions, rather than
snivel under the limited and rigidly codified viewpoints of one tyrant.

In 1776, Americans were deserting to the British. General George
Washington's army was attenuating. Rather than asking individuals to
appeal to reason to decide whether a high-taxing, remote, and
controlling authority was superior to limited government; Great Britain
only asked Americans to pin a red ribbon to their doors. Doing so would
grant the ribboned households a sense of false security against
tyrannical retribution while throwing independent thinkers off-base with
peer pressure and self-doubts.

Morale was down among 1776 patriots.The majority was entranced by the
security promised by sycophancy, and the few that believed in freedom
enough to see it through to victory were worn out. The weather was
miserable and, in fact, the only thing working in the patriots' favor
may have been the marauding Hessian mercenaries tearing up Trenton in
the name of the Crown. Washington had determined if there was ever to be
hope for liberty, he would have to subject his remaining and waning
troops to a 48-hour march in freezing weather for an attack when the
British occupants were off-guard, celebrating with family or, more
likely, liquor.

This year, printing presses are shutting down to give their employees
highly-earned time off with their families, people have airplane tickets
to fly across the country to see parents, and more business-minded
people are taking advantage of an empty office to upgrade systems. Obama
O's have replaced the red ribbons, and Organizing for America has been
employing more sophisticated means of psychological coercion. People
have been asked to dredge their souls for anecdotes of shortcomings in
healthcare, under the fallacious assumption that “more government,”
whatever that means, will fix things. The threat of Congress conducting
business, fair or foul, looms.

Rather than allowing Christmastime slumber to mark the beginning and end
of American liberties, may the ingenuity of liberty rise up again so the
bells on Christmas day will peal more loud and deep the unbroken song,
“The wrong shall fail, the right prevail.”