This is being posted before the health care vote. It isn’t about the vote itself.
At the beginning of today’s debate in the House, congressmen rose for the Pledge of Allegiance. And it struck me that the phrase “with liberty and justice for all” just about summarizes the dichotomy I wrote about last time. Conservatives invoke liberty and the belief that people should be free of government interference, in this case free to arrange their health care privately (...if they can). Progressives want justice (yes, the same “social justice” that Glenn Beck was ranting against) that includes protection from predatory business practices — in this case the power of insurance companies to keep health care unaffordable for many Americans. And never the twain shall meet.
Once the speeches started, what really got to me is the tendency of politicians to claim to speak for the entire population: “The American people want x.” “The American people don’t want y.” Never “my constituents” or even “right-thinking Americans”; always “the American people” as a rhetorical whole. Gimme a break.
While this has no doubt been going on since the founding, it never really struck me until the 1996 presidential debates. Bob Dole seemed to repeatedly proclaim what the American people did and didn’t want, and I resented his presumptuousness in speaking for me. And while I’d like to accuse Republicans of being guiltier of this tactic, I have to acknowledge Obama’s tendency to claim that the American people want health care reform. Which I think was largely the case until Fox whipped up its tempest in a teapot. People protesting outside the Capitol today are American people. Are they the American people? All I know is, they’re nobody I want to be associated with.
Which is it that the American people want more, liberty or justice? More to the point, why can’t we have both? Given that we can no longer lay claim to being the indivisible nation to which our legislators pledge allegiance, it sounds like a toss-up to me.
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