On one side, we have a young attractive, intelligent, idealistic, charismatic, almost totally inexperienced product of the Chicago Political Machine whose real backing and agenda are worrisome to many of us, paired with a 30 year veteran of the US congress, a good man, Joe Biden.
On the other side, we have a very experienced, grizzled, maverick veteran of wars of all kinds, one who has suffered far more than any of us care to contemplate and has come out with his ideals crystalized into a love for his country and a genuine desire to serve it, paired with another young, attractive, charismatic, idealistic candidate, this one a feminist fighter, Sarah Palin, whose only flaw, as I see it, is her support of the aerial shooting of wolves and grizzlies. [Why? There isn't one documented case of a wolf killing a human in Alaska...some say it's to protect the caribou herds so that they will attract the tourist hunters and bolster the Alaskan economy.]
The stage is set; it's easy to see why some pundits say the election will be decided by personalities. The players are more interesting than any we have seen for many years, but the issues should still concern all of us..
Do we really want socialized medicine? That's a question that looms heavily before us in the two months ahead, and may influence how we vote in November.
I recently read a condensed lecture discussing whether Canada's economy was a model for America. Many people don't realize that Canada is a resource economy, whereas the US imports resources. Canada has the second largest oil reserves in the world, something that was news to me. As was the fact that in 1945, the Royal Canadian Navy had the world's third largest surface fleet, their air force was one of the world's most effective, and Canadian troops got the toughest beach on D-Day. But Canadian attitudes have changed over the years with the ever increasing emphasis on "secondary impulses," - government dependence and government regulation of everything.
My reference to Canada comes from a piece in a publication called "Imprimus," published by the Hillsdale College Press, abridged from a lecture delivered at the second annual Free Market Forum on campus not quite a year ago.
Socialized health care was pioneered in Canada. Apparently Canadian ideas are spreading all over the Western world. It's one of the "secondary impulses of society - welfare entitlements from cradle to grave..." so said Mark Steyn, a columnist for a variety of American newspapers, who wrote and delivered a lecture on this topic at Hillsdale in September, 2007.
Steyn goes on to say that one party in the United States, [Democrats] and most parties all over the Western world are now almost exclusively about those "secondary impulses - government health care, government day care, government this, government that. And if you have government health care, you not only annex a huge chunk of the economy, you also destroy a huge chunk of individual liberty. You fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state into something closer to that of junkie and pusher, and you make it very difficult ever to change back..."
One very interesting point Steyn makes is this: "Public health care in Canada depends on private health care in the US." He cites a small news story about a Canadian woman who gave birth to that extremely rare phenomenon, identical quadruplets. The four girls had to be born in a US hospital because there was no space anywhere at any Canadian neonatal intensive care unit. The quads were born at Benefice Hospital in Great Falls, Montana, after their mother was "flown 300 miles in a bumpy twin prop plane over the Rockies."
With socialized health care, you wait and wait and wait... according to Steyn, a Canadian by birth, the wait list time for space in a Canadian maternity ward is ten months. Think about this. Six months for an MRI, he says, a year for a hip replacement, but TEN MONTHS for a bed to deliver a baby. How long is gestation? How predictable are pregnancies? Is this the height of absurdity? DO WE WANT THIS HERE?
The differences in the Canadian and US governments in some ways go back to their founding. American forefathers wrote of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Canadian founders wrote of "peace, order, and good government." Ronald Reagan said, "We are a nation that has a government, not the other way around."
This is a very important point to consider in the two months ahead. Both parties promise change in Washington, but the direction is not the same.
One would increase public dependence on the government, increase corporate taxes, curtail trade, pull in our defenses, and pull troops out on a short timetable. The other would help preserve individual liberties, make sure we don't lose a war, keep taxes down and stop giving away... billions of dollars to "people who don't like us very much," [McCain's words] putting that money to work in this country, boosting the private sector where real jobs are created. A good friend who owns a small business said it very well to me years ago, and I've never forgotten it: "What poor person ever gave anybody a job?"
Tax breaks to businesses make it possible for them to hire more people. Working people contribute to society, they don't drain its resources.. Jobs pull people out of poverty. Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day; teach him how to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime - an old saw, but one that illustrates a basic difference between our choices this November.
Rebecca Wagner
Powell Butte, OR
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