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I have always advocated that ObamaCare® is essentially slavery.
Consider this definition of slavery by Fredrick Douglass:
“What is freedom? It is the right to choose one’s own employment. Certainly it means that, if it means anything; and when any[one] undertakes to decide for any man when he shall work, where he shall work, at what shall he work, and for what he shall work, he or they practically reduce him to slavery.”
Government impress of service is listed as a grievance in the Declaration of Independence:
“He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands .”
According to Congressman Pete Stark, the Constitution does not restrain the Federal Government from doing anything.
Those that believe that the service of another is their due right must be rebuked with the same disdain we hold for those former advocates of the age-old practice of slave-trade and ownership.
“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”
― Frederick Douglass
This is truly insulting to the descendants of slaves – health care reform is no where close to being slavery. To suggested it is hyperbole at best.
On the contrary, such acknowledgement is proof that some of us appreciate the lessons of the past. Obviously you believe that the service of others should be co-opted by the State, if it is something you need or desire.
How is that not comparable to slavery? I state my references in fact and truth.
Your argument is based upon your personal opinion not on absolute truth. The flaw of the post modern existentialist mindset is that it bases its opinions upon personal likes and dislikes, rather than absolute truth and Natural Law.
You fail to recognize that others have no compunction to adhere to your personal likes and desires, anymore than you do to theirs. Numerous common phrases such as: “go pound sand”, “don’t let the screen door slap you on the behind on your way out”, and the great Aggie phrase, “Highway 6 runs both ways”, support this truth.
To believe otherwise smacks of the same arrogance that defines the character of every tyrannical dictator.
In Federalist 10 – Madison warns of the tendency of our human nature to gather in factious groups intent upon depriving other members of their own community of their civil liberties.
It is only by recognizing the transcendent authority that determines all men equal before their Creator, that we can view others not as servants, slaves, or as stepping stones to fulfill our own ambitions, lusts, and desires.
So, unless you can base your argument on anything other than your own opinion, my assertion that ObamaCare® is essentially slavery stands as absolute truth.
You are wrong. Whether or not you agree or disagree with the individual mandate or any of the other tenants of health care reform, it is in no way comparable to the enslavement of an entire people. If you think that a requirement to buy health insurance is the same thing as being what African Americans experienced then you are crazy.
Again, your argument fails on several points:
1) Personal opinion is neither relevant to reality or a debate argument.
2) You try to shift the argument to a different subject – the individual mandate.
3) Your statement: “the enslavement of an entire people” is a fallacy on several points:
a) Slavery is a state of coerced and subjected loss of liberty, not a people group.
b) No all members of any particular people group, apart from the Hebrews in Egypt, have been enslaved.
Not all slaves were/are African Americans.
Not all African Americans were/are slaves.
c) Slavery is still with us today in all its horror, but we ignore it.
4) The use of a personal attack in a debate means that you have no evidence other than personal opinion to support your position.
Therefore, I still assert with facts that your desire to subject individuals employed in the Health Care industry to serve you according to your demands via the authority and power of government is in fact slavery.
I didn’t shift the argument, the individual mandate is the specific policy point that conservatives have state infringes on liberty. Second, people that work for the health care industry will not be working directly for the government what-so-ever. If anything health care reform completely sold out to the health care industry, and especially to the pharmacological industry.
Of course not all slaves were/are African Americans, and not all African Americans were/are slaves. But the vast majority of African Americans in the United States prior to 1865 were slaves, and the vast majority of African Americans lived under defacto slavery under Jim Crow until the 1960′s.
Glad you are finally putting on your thinking cap and coming up with some facts, rather than opinions.
So, let’s go through your last comment.
1. While many states are declaring the individual mandate unconstitutional, my focus is entirely upon the liberty of those who will provide the health care services under ObamaCare®.
In going through the first Frederick Douglass definition of slavery. please consider:
Will those individuals be able to choose where they live and work under ObamaCare®? The answer is no.
Will those individuals be able to choose the profession or study of their preference? Again, the answer is no.
Will those individuals be able to practice the American founding principle of his Creator endowed right to pursue happiness according to his own personal desires? Again, the answer is no.
2. It is irrelevant for whom these individuals actually work; the full power of the Federal Government has subjected these individuals to lesser Liberty than defined in our Founding Documents.
What is Liberty if not the Creator endowed right to choose your own path, your own course of action, to make decisions according to your own self-interest?
3. In fact, could not the argument be made that ObamaCare® is exactly the same concept as “defacto slavery under Jim Crow” in which State gov’ts under the rule of the Democratic Party, voted to restrict the Liberty of African Americans through various commercial restrictions such as: back of the bus, giving up your seat, inability to be served in restaurants, as well as the threats from the KKK for those African Americans daring to vote Republican?
http://bcsteaparty.com/2011/05/the-truth-about-the-kkk/
To expand the “Jim Crow” reference, it could be argued that our local smoking ban via city councils is Jim Crow redux. During Jim Crow, the bus companies certainly didn’t want to segregate their paying passengers. However, they abdicated their liberty to run their private businesses according to free market principles by accepting such overreaching power of government. Economists Walter E. Williams and Thomas Sowell have done extensive research into the Jim Crow segregation practices of government into private industry.
I encourage you to reconsider your view of Creator endowed Liberty for all men.
Allowing others to live their lives according to their own pursuit of happiness is the very foundation of Liberty. Free men do not have to beg, scrape, and bow to gain permission from their own creation – The Constitution and our government – in order to fulfill their dreams. Such thinking is the foundation of classical liberalism.
If The United States of America ceases to be the only nation that reveres man’s Creator endowed rights, where will the free-thinkers, the inventive, the dissidents, the innovative go?
While President Obama called upon us to live as though we were in the Army, some of us don’t choose to join the ObamaArmy®. Without a choice, there is no Liberty. With the threat of coercion, there can be no real choice.
In your personal lust to co-opt the services of others, you at first treat other freemen as cattle, only to become a steer in the chute toward loss of liberty yourself to be fed until you serve no purpose.
“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.” Frederick Douglass
No one is forced to work in the health care industry, and no one in the health care industry’s freedom is taken away. You’re argument is false.
Since I listed several ways in which ObamaCare®, and I want to make clear that I indict RomneyCare® as well, restricts the liberty of those working in the Health Care Industry, I wonder if you are once again relying upon your post modern existentialist mindset that bases your ideology simply upon your own opinions and desires.
Your opinion on this issue seems to be based upon the logic that you need healthcare; therefore the coercive force of government can be applied to force Health Care Industry workers to provide that service for you via some method determined by government legislation rather than free will or self-interest.
What great charitable service are you providing to the community to warrant your ability to vote that the Liberty of others is to provide for your needs? Maybe if you don’t have a charitable service, we can appoint one for you to provide for the rest of the community?
If you insist that Health Care Industry workers are treated as though they joined the ObamaArmy®, then YOU must be a charitable service provider, too. No “Animal Farm” here, with you self-appointing yourself as a pig, and more equal than the rest of us comrades.
Your insistence and willingness to create a government that mandates others operate according to your self-made moral code sounds a lot like a state religion.
Thank God, our founders wrote a Constitution that clearly rejected the establishment of a state church!