As the debate continues concerning President Obama’s health care reform legislation, I believe that all of us are being misled by arguments over availability, quality of care cost. We are not being misled over the health care issues themselves, for in truth, Obama’s health care plan is just plain wrong. Obama’s health care reform, while being one of the biggest mistakes Congress could make, is being used to obscure his true reform issue – national socialism.

While it is true that free rein capitalism does produce political corruption, through the mechanism of “pay to play, major disparities of wealth, cycles of boom and bust, and with the latter, both high employment followed by wholesale unemployment, these cycles are both expected and, in a manner of speaking self cleansing for the system. No other economic system can stand up to what our system has done in our short two hundred plus years. Not only has it saved our bacon, it has saved the bacon of several other democratic or quasi democratic nations.

Capitalism need not be unrestrained. This last economic recession was not only the fault of private hands on Wall Street and in the housing industry, it was a major fault of government, in that departments created to oversee such abuse of the economy and industry, failed miserably to do their jobs. This was a perfect example of big government “not at work.” Bigger does not make for better when it comes to government oversight. The corruption and non-expertise is already built into the system of government. By increasing the bureaucracy, all we shall obtain is more of the same. What this nation needs is a small central government made up of honest men, and honesty is the last thing I think of when I consider the qualities of our political leaders.

Obama however wants to socialize the entire system, and I am not speaking of just health care. He wants the government to control the economy in all areas. The major problem with socialism and its big brother communism, is that both empower the few over the many, and the result is tyranny and centralization of excess power. That excess power corrupts absolutely, although it is difficult to imagine an even greater degree of corruption than we already have in Washington D.C.

Planning our economy, so that production adjusts to the alleged needs of the people, so that nor more is produced than is necessary, may prevent an overbuilding of housing and an overproduction of automobiles, but it also demoralizes a national economy, by eliminating the incentive to succeed, and makes such a nation prey to outside intervention and intrigue. It was that very attitude which found the U.S. in a state of unpreparedness in 1940, when the Nazis began their march over Europe. To protect this nation against outside tyranny, the last thing we need is tyranny within our own government.

There is no right to a livelihood for every man, woman and child. There is no right to an advanced education. There is only the right to pursue happiness, one’s life and liberty, and the latter are definitely prey to an all powerful bureaucracy which has determined that it knows what is best for the individual.

All planned economies, throughout history, have demonstrated the same self defeating traits. They become oppressive, heavily burdened with a corrupt bureaucracy and in the end, become tyrannical. The individual citizen is oppressed to the point of losing his incentive to pursue his own happiness in exchange for an alleged benefit to the people as a whole. What really results is a civilization which has no future, living out its days with its hands out to its government, as would a beggar on the street corner.

Russia is the perfect example of just such a planned economy. Despite numerous 5, 7 and 10 year plans, Stalin and those who followed could not begin to bring that vast nation to the economic and industrial level of the U.S. Why? Capitalism unrestrained, although having its drawbacks, is a wondrous form of economy, especially in the hands of a forward looking people. Unrestrained Capitalism is capable of anything and everything.

This is not to encourage another decade of greed and non oversight of Wall Street and all the industries involved in this current recession. Restraint and oversight do not however spell out the words big government or socialism. For example, the SEC was could have prevented a lot of the harm brought to this nation. However, it failed. Its people failed as the system of big government failed. The key to preventing this from occurring again is not to simply add more cooks to the kitchen. Rather, make the kitchen more efficient. Eliminate the bad apples and seek quality rather than quantity. How long would a heart surgeon stay in practice if his death rate was 50%? Such internal oversight needs be applied to government bureaucrats. We hire them and we can fire them. How difficult is it to find good people who can do the job they were hired to do? As I ask this question, just look at Obama’s cabinet and his appointees in all areas of our government. Are you comforted by their backgrounds and quality, as much as I am?

A planned economy, as Obama and the far left end of his party envision, cares nothing to protect the rights of the individual. Without a protection of the individual’s rights, there is no reason for one to be creative in any aspect of one’s talents.

In the specific area of health care, a planned system of health care distribution will take away the right of the individual to seek the best care available, remove research and development from the industry, injure the elderly and the very sick, dissuade young men and women from the arduous task of an long and difficult education and training in the field of medicine and surgery, when the rewards are controlled by the state, and eventually dumb down the entire field to one which mimics the programs which have failed so miserably in other large states. At the same time, every other industry and employment program is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. The nation is then ripe for outside intervention, without a means of self protection.

Of course, while the individual consumer is facing the bureaucratic loopholes of a planned health care system, the bureaucrats themselves will face none of that , in that they are insulated from their own legislation. Is a Congressman or a Senator, elected by the people and paid by the people to do the people’s business, any more deserving of the fruits of the nation’s labor than the common worker? Of course not, and yet, that is the tyranny and bureaucratic oppression brought upon us in a planned economy such as socialism. As we stand in line for our necessities, that burden will surely not befall those who brought this legislation upon us.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Congress is not blind to the voter’s demands, knowing that this term could be his last term, if he does not perform the people’s business in a proper fashion. Any restraint on our sovereign rights, through a planned economic system, which we might as well call Obamism, is the wrong path to take for this nation. Beware the Trojan horse.

JLK