Observations©

By Donald S. Conkey

Date: August 27, 2009 - # 9935 - Title: Town-hall meetings are wake up calls for all Americans  

What is the real truth about HR 3200 – the Obama/Pelosi health care bill that is causing so many Americans to attend, in growing numbers, the town-hall meetings all across America? Will HR 3200 cure all of America’s health care ills while providing health care to all Americans, as its proponents claim? Or will it destroy the best care system in the world, and burden our children and grandchildren with unsustainable debt, as its opponents claim, causing America to slide into bankruptcy?

What we see going on in Washington D.C., and all across the country in the town-hall meetings, seems to some like they are just waking up from a bad dream and not liking what they see. But when you realize the enormity of the debt, and the amount of interest America is paying China today, you realize it is not a dream but that something sinister is happening – and most of us fear for what we see coming.

Not since the Civil-Rights Movement of the sixties has America seen such energized debate over a single issue. And as in every debate of this magnitude we see both the good and the ugly. In the march on Selma by Dr. King and his followers in the sixties it was the hired thugs (police) of the south that opposed the peaceful marchers, violently at times. Today we see hired thugs at work disrupting today’s town-hall meetings (similar to King’s marches). Today’s hired thugs are bused in and represent the administration via their supporters, the unions. And what we see today, as today’s thugs go about their nasty disruptive business, is as atrocious as were the attack dogs used by the paid thugs of the sixties. Both eras were bad for America. But both were necessary for our democratic republic to continue to function.

This needed debate, I think, will lead to corrections in the existing health-care system if it is not going to go bankrupt. And nobody, especially seniors, want to see the Medicare/Medicaid systems go broke. But it has to be corrected. It can not continue as it is. But how! The proposed changes scare not only me but millions of Americans, especially those who have studied this bill and read what is being proposed.

I also think the anger that has been generated by this debate has been good for America. It has made Americans sit up and take note of what they have had for 222 years. Americans have been lulled to sleep and have taken for granted what they have had their entire life, freedom. The direction the new administration is going with its entitlement programs, direct income redistribution programs, attacks on the free enterprise system, and appointment of a self-professed communist to a position of influence and power is frightening.

It reminds me of the story we use to tell as youth about how a frog reacts when it is put into a cold pot of water and then put on a hot stove verses what happens when the frog is quickly thrown into a pot of boiling water. In the former instance the frog adjusts to its surrounding and is boiled before realizing what is happening. In the second instance when the frog is thrown into the boiling water it jumps out, saving itself.

America’s Constitution (the Frog) was put into a pot of water in the early 1900s by Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. They placed this pot, with the Frog still full of life, on the stove of Progressivism and began to turn up the heat by passing legislation that changed the intent of the Founding Fathers only slightly. The Frog adjusted, not realizing it was being cooked. Chrissies (World War I, the great depression and World War II) provided opportunities for the Progressives (socialists) to turn up the heat with more restrictive legislation: the passage of a temporary payroll tax deduction bill, to pay for World War II, never went away and opened the door for the excessive spending we see today, Johnson’s Great Society  destroyed the traditional family structure for one major segment of society, and the recent federalization of America’s education system are the most blatant of how the Progressives have “changed” the intent of the Founders while “boiling the Frog.”

This “boiling of the Frog” has been a joint effort of both democrats and republicans. And now that the water is boiling the Frog needs to be saved. But it may be too late! We hope not. Last week four family members attended the packed town-hall meeting sponsored by the Cherokee Republican Women’s Club where Senator Johnnie Isakson and State Senator Chip Rogers tried to explain what is happening in Washington and Atlanta. The meeting was dignified but there were pointed questions asked that provided insight into the fear felt by those attending. One woman told the Senator her husband, a WW II veteran, is feeling betrayed by the current administration and wants to leave the country. It was a sad story!

Senator Rogers pointed out that state tax collections in Georgia for the first six months of 09 were the lowest in the past 13 years and that while Georgia has reduced spending by 13 percent this year, the federal government has increased spending by 29 percent. Senator Isakson spoke to this issue and stated that “unbridled spending (in Washington) will lead to the destruction of America.” Town-hall meetings are a wake up call for all freedom loving Americans.