Rhoads, Hsieh, and Cushman on Midterm Elections

I came across three very good articles on the topic of Tuesday’s Republican victory (or to be more precise, I should call it Tuesday’s Democratic defeat).

In the first article, Jared Rhoads reported that he voted against Democrats across the board:

Since I am emphatically not a registered member of the Republican party, allow me briefly to explain.

My votes were cast with one goal in mind: to stem the tide toward statism and in so doing buy more time for rational ideas to take hold in the culture. On the surface, that means limited government, lower taxes, lower spending, and less regulation. More deeply, it means individual rights.[1]

In another article, Paul Hsieh advises the Republicans to understand what swept them into office. Their victory is decidedly not a mandate to compromise and deliver “ObamaLite”:

The 2010 vote was a powerful message from Americans rejecting the socialist policies of President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid -- including the bailouts, the out-of-control federal spending, the higher taxes, and the nationalized health care scheme.

Voters elected Republicans to halt and reverse these policies -- not compromise to pass watered-down versions of those same bad ideas.[2]

Nor is the victory a green light to impose “social conservative” values:

The Republicans’ electoral rebound has been driven by millions of independent voters like the Colorado small businessman Ron Vaughn, who told the New York Times, “I want the Democrats out of my pocket and Republicans out of my bedroom.”[2]

Finally, at American Thinker, Charlotte Cushman urges the Republicans not to compromise with the Democrats to “find common ground” with policies that are disastrous for America:

We have been taught than compromising is a virtue, that in any conflict, we must concede things to the other side. . .

Finding common ground means that both sides agree on some fundamental principles. By compromising with Obama we would be saying that we agree with some aspects of Socialism. No we don’t. There is no common ground between an ideology of slavery and the ideology of freedom. Rush Limbaugh said the meaning of the election was “No, we don’t want to ‘work together,’ and the American people did not say they want to work with you. The American people said yesterday they want to stop you!”[3]

With an entirely secular meaning, I say, “Amen!”

NOTES

1. Jared Rhoads, “A Republican voter . . . ,” 2 Nov 2010, http://lucidicus.org/editorials.php?nav=20101102a.

2. Paul Hsieh, “GOP: Dance With The One Who Brung You,” 3 Nov 2010, http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/gop-dance-with-the-one-who-brung-you/?singlepage=true.

3. Charlotte Cushman, “No More Goodie Two-Shoes,” 4 Nov 2010, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/11/no_more_goodie_twoshoes.html.

A Good Sign

I was thrilled to flip to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal today and see that both Richard Ralston and Paul Hsieh had their letters-to-the-editor published.  Congratulations to both of them.

I was also encouraged by the tone of some of the adjacent commentary.  A couple of letters were clearly critical of government regulation and Fed meddling, and the main article on the next page was titled "Washington is Killing Silicon Valley."

The link to the editorials is here at the moment I am writing this, but since the contents change every day, I am reprinting Mr. Ralston's and Dr. Hsieh's letters in full below (Note 1):

You are probably correct that a major new national health-care program will be rushed through the next Congress without substantial debate through some mechanism such as budget reconciliation. That is because many of its elements would not survive close examination. The fatuous claim of Sen. Max Baucus that placing the nation's medical care under the rule of an "independent" council of presidentially appointed experts would not constitute government management of care is only the most conspicuous example. Others include the claim that computerizing those remaining medical records still on paper would reduce insurance costs by $2,500 a year per family.

But the main reason for the big rush is that nobody has a clue how the government will pay for it -- anymore than they know how the current unfunded liability of Medicare and Medicaid can be honored.

The last thing that proponents want is for anyone to ask where the money will come from, except perhaps questions about such details as the individual rights of patients and physicians to make their own medical decisions without the approval of presidentially appointed experts.

Richard E. Ralston 
Executive Director 
Americans for Free Choice in Medicine 
Newport Beach, Calif.

Businesses expecting to save money under President-elect Barack Obama's universal health-care plan are going to be in for a rude awakening. President-elect Obama's plan includes an employer mandate in which businesses must either pay their employee health insurance or else pay into a government fund to cover the uninsured.

A similar mandate has already been in place in Massachusetts for two years. As health costs there have skyrocketed, the state government has asked for more and more "contributions" from businesses. During this financial crisis, the last thing America needs is yet more economic burdens on the businessmen who create jobs and prosperity.

The fundamental problem with Mr. Obama's plan is the premise that health care is a "right" that must be guaranteed by the government. Health care is a need, not a right. Rights are freedoms of action, not automatic claims on goods and services that must be produced by another. Attempting to guarantee an alleged "right" to health care must necessarily violate actual individual rights and will destroy the American economy in the process.

Paul Hsieh, M.D. 
Sedalia, Colo.

NOTES

1. Letters to the Editor, Wall Street Journal, 22 Dec 2008, p. A18.