| | ObamaCare exempts Congress and the President - they get to have their own medical care, they can also fly off to Switzerland if they need to. Those of us here at RoR know that what they are doing will destroy medical care in our country, which will have a ripple effect all around the world. But most of the politicans don't know that. They either lie to themselves about the effects, or they really have drunk deeply of the kool-aid and believe they are improving medicine, or they assume no matter what happens they'll still find a way to get what they need.
In short, they either think THEY have a choice or that ObamaCare is a step in the right direction.
It is true that with ObamaCare choices will become non-existent, but it won't happen overnight - the conversion of our partially free medical care system into a totally government provided single-payor system would take about a decade or so. The new congress elected this November is very likely to vote to not fund ObamaCare and if they get the numbers in the Senate to overturn a veto, they'd repeal it (it doesn't look likely that they will have those numbers). Elections are unpredictable, but if I had to bet, it would be that Obama is a one term president. He may be pushing very hard to collapse the entire system to generate a crisis large enough to transform the nation into a socialist dictatorship, but November is too close and the new congress will emasculate him and make the far left become shrill, screeching and more visible for what they really are. I would bet that the average citizen will hold on to their current distrust of his changes and with the little edge of the tea party phenomena will hold on to a hope that returning to smaller government and more free enterprise will be the answer. And out of that I see Obama being replace in 2012. If that is so, we will most likely do more to repair the drift into statism that began in the late 1800's than has ever been done before. (But I also suspect that the statist's and fuzzy conservatives of different stripes in the Republican party will damage the swing towards Capitalism so that we will still be a mixed economy.) It's fun to predict, but this far out, counting on tea party effects is too much like reading tea leaves.
As individuals we have choice. Because of that, as a culture we are always changing - sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. We have seen a trend for the worse for some time. But the founding of our nation marks a high point in the greater trend for the better. We may be at a low point right now, and about to head back up. There may be more ups and downs, making our cultural progress look like a DOW Jones chart that, on average, is headed up, but not without lots of corrections along the way. Because we are capable of reason, and because we have choice, I have to say that it makes more sense to be optimistic about the long run. The day will come, even if it is 100 or 200 years from now that we will achieve a true minarchy. And when we do, it is likely to be founded on a base of rational egoism, with altruism becoming a minority position among moralities. Unfortunately, something that far in the future is like science fiction - you take it in for enjoyment more than for practical considerations.
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