Declaration, Not Constitution

It's the Declaration, not the Constitution!

The best way to accomplish something “impossible” is to start with why it should be done. Get agreement on why, and then we’ll work as a team to figure out how. Until we make up our minds that we ALL must have access to healthcare . . . period . . . . those who are proud to resist reform will cause compromise that falls short of that goal. This has happened continually since Teddy Roosevelt first called for healthcare reform.

In the 1850’s, abolitionists faced a very angry mob of people who were convinced that somehow the constitution guaranteed the right to hold slaves. Nowhere in the constitution did it guarantee this right, but nowhere did it prevent it either. Yesterday 75,000 angry people marched on Washington declaring that somehow the constitution prevents us from providing healthcare to all Americans.

Lincoln put forth the position that the notion of “all men are created equal” . . . . a phrase from the Declaration of Independence . . . . is inherent, though not literally expressed, in the constitution. In other words, it was not the Constitution that created this right, it was the Declaration of Independence.

The majority of the people who resisted Lincoln’s position so much that they fought and died in a war did NOT own slaves. Instead, they were poor people whipped up into a frenzy by an aristocracy who owned the means of persuasion, using hatred and bigotry to motivate. But Lincoln persisted, and with the Emancipation Proclamation he created law that meant people were free to work for a wage, and to change jobs at will. Ending slavery was a moral imperative established in the Declaration of Independence.

The majority of the people who resist Healthcare Reform are NOT benefiting by our current healthcare system. I personally know a hardcore Rush Limbaugh fan who, once he left our company to start his own small business, was forced to go on our Cobra program, paying outrageous premiums because his wife has pre-existing conditions and he can’t get insurance on his own. Cobra will soon run out for him and he will be uninsured. Yet he thinks he sounds smart as he dittos talking points that he hears daily from his mentor and brain, Rush Limbaugh.

Barack Obama faces an angry mob of people, fueled by a corporate oligarchy that has no need for healthcare reform. This oligarchy controls the media willing to use hatred and bigotry as motivation. These "dittoheads", working against their own interests, want to stop Obama from creating a law that means all people will have access to healthcare, and can change providers at will. Interestingly, the resistors of Obama’s position declare that somehow the constitution prevents us from guaranteeing healthcare to all people.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are LIFE, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Obama needs to push the second half of the sentence that Lincoln pushed. Let’s insist on the fact that GOD has endowed all people with the right to healthcare. It is a moral imperative. We are all guaranteed a right to LIFE, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. All other industrial nations in the world get this. They started with the notion that we must provide healthcare to all, and then they figured out how to do it.

The fact we've been trying to deal with healthcare since Teddy Roosevelt is turning this into a "near-impossible" goal. I think it's because we have not started with the right "why." We are trying to figure out how to do it without securing agreement as to why it should be done. There is no clear moral imperative. And thus people like Dick Army and Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck can make the case that somehow the constitution prevents us from guaranteeing this right.

Dan Sturn