Constitution

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Is Healthcare a Right?

March 13, 2010 in Health Care by Greg | 12 comments

As President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats pull together a final version of a health care overhaul bill and push for House votes as early as this coming week, it’s important to consider health care as a right. Last year, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) wrote persuasively that health care is a right versus a privilege, ostensibly because this is the way other countries treat health care. Not to be left behind in the international community, he advocated the following:

Healthcare_stethoscope As the health care debate heats up in Washington, we as a nation have to answer two very fundamental questions. First, should all Americans be entitled to health care as a right and not a privilege – which is the way every other major country treats health care and the way we respond to such other basic needs as education, police and fire protection? Second, if we are to provide quality health care to all, how do we accomplish that in the most cost-effective way possible?

I think the answer to the first question is pretty clear, and one of the reasons that Barack Obama was elected president. Most Americans do believe that all of us should have health care coverage, and that nobody should be left out of the system. The real debate is how we accomplish that goal in an affordable and sustainable way. In that regard, I think the evidence is overwhelming that we must end the private insurance company domination of health care in our country and move toward a publicly-funded, single-payer Medicare for All approach.1

Politicians have a propensity to exhibit A False Solicitude for the Unfortunate in society. And previously, Michael Connelly pointed out the health care bill is “a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred.”2

Recently, Walter E. Williams, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, addressed the question of health care rights from a moral and economic point of view. He wrote that true rights exist at the same time among people. As such, one’s rights should not infringe upon the rights of others3:

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  1. “Health Care is a Right, Not a Privilege”. 8 Jun 2009. The Huffington Post. 13 Mar 2010.↩
  2. Health Care Bill Constitutional?.↩
  3. This principle echoes D&C 134:4 which was written in regards to “religious opinions” but can be applied to other forms of rights.↩

Secret Government

January 19, 2010 in Communism by Greg | 1 comment

The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis is a 1987 Public Broadcasting Service video documentary with Bill Moyers following the Iran-Contra affair – ostensibly, an effort to prevent the spread of communism in the Western Hemisphere.1 According to Mr. Moyers,

The Secret Government is an interlocking network of official functionaries, spies, mercenaries, ex-generals, profiteers and superpatriots, who, for a variety of motives, operate outside the legitimate institutions of government. Presidents have turned to them when they can’t win the support of the Congress or the people, creating that unsupervised power so feared by the framers of our Constitution.

The documentary traces the history of the secret government to the National Security Act of 1947 which was signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. It “realigned and reorganized the U.S. Armed Forces, foreign policy, and Intelligence Community apparatus in the aftermath of World War II.”2

Although originally intended to be only an “intelligence-gathering” organization, under the auspices of this act the CIA quickly became an “operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.”3 According to the documentary “a secret report [was] prepared for the White House in 1954 by a group of distinguished citizens headed by former president Herbert Hoover”:

It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto accepted norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, longstanding American concepts of fair play must be reconsidered. We must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, more effective methods than those used against us.

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  1. See Wolf, Julie. “The Iran-Contra Affair”. PBS. 18 Jan 2010 for background on this event.↩
  2. “National Security Act of 1947”. Wikipedia. 17 Jan 2010.↩
  3. Truman, Harry S. “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence”. 22 Dec 1963. Washington Post. 17 Jan 2010. See also, McGovern, Ray. “Break the CIA into Two”. Consortium News. 17 Jan 2010.↩

Federal Reserve and the Constitution

January 15, 2010 in Money by Greg | 1 comment

Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) wrote about the role of the Federal Reserve in relationship to the Constitution. After providing a brief U.S. history lesson of the debate over paper money, its attendant danger of inflation, and the role of a central bank in society, he wrote:

Federal Reserve global tentacles The lack of respect for the Constitution even in the nineteenth century set the stage for the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Fear, misinformation, and ignorance allowed government to ram bad policies down the throat of the American people. This is not unlike giving the president authority to go to war and to bail out those least deserving help in an economic crisis. The rationalization that the state’s interest supersedes the interests and the rights of the people is embedded in the arguments as to why the American people had to go along with those who hate commodity money and love central banking.

The Fed was established as a result of the public and banking clamor for an elastic currency, and an elastic currency is nothing more than one that can be arbitrarily increased in volume at the discretion of the monetary managers. Sometimes they argue over who exactly will have the authority to do so, the central bank or Congress or private banks themselves. Increasing the supply of money and credit is the proper definition of inflation, meaning that when the demands were heard for an elastic currency, all they were looking for was a legal right to inflate the currency for the benefit of whatever special interests they were concerned for at the moment.

Noble intentions are always used to justify the inflation, but the real reasons are far more sinister. Those who get the control over the money are the beneficiaries, not the people as a whole.

Economist John Maynard Keynes, before he became the champion of inflation, wrote quite correctly of the grave danger of inflation. Like Greenspan, he changed his tune as the years moved on. Keynes stated in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace:

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.1

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  1. John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1920), pp. 235-236.↩

Introduction to Notes on Socialism

January 10, 2010 in Socialism by Greg | 6 comments

The following is an introduction to the series of notes on socialism. Its companion series is Socialism vs Capitalism and if possible, should be read together to get an understanding of these two competing political economic theories.

This series began as an investigation into the roots of modern socialism. Many trace its “origins in the French Revolution of 1789 and the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution.”1 In fact, the term “socialism” is often “attributed to Pierre Leroux in 1834, who called socialism ‘the doctrine which would not give up any of the principles of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity of the French Revolution of 1789.’”2

The Law of Consecration and Socialism Compared

Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution From a religious perspective, socialism is of interest to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because it bears some similarities with various attempts by the Church to implement the “law of consecration”. For example,

The Lord revealed several purposes for the law of consecration: to bring the Church to stand independent of all other institutions (D&C 78:14); to strengthen Zion, adorning her in beautiful garments, as a bride prepared and worthy of the bridegroom (D&C 33:17; 58:11; 65:3; 82:14, 18; etc.); and to prepare the Saints for a place in the Celestial Kingdom (D&C 78:7).

Commenting on this subject, President John Taylor stated that consecration is a celestial law and, when observed, its adherents become a celestial people (JD 17:177-81). Thus, men and women today can become like as those of Enoch’s day, “of one heart and one mind,…with no poor among them” (Moses 7:18). Orson Pratt, an early apostle, observed that if the Lord’s people aspire to the Celestial Kingdom, they must begin to learn the order of life that is there (JD 2:102-103).3

Since Zion designates both a place of gathering4 and an ideal society where “the pure in heart” live in harmony5, it bears many resemblances to utopian societies – real and imagined – of the past.6

Continuing, John A. Widtsoe, an apostle, explained how the law of consecration was implemented in the early Church:

Continue reading Introduction to Notes on Socialism »»

  1. “History of Socialism”. Wikipedia. 9 Jan 2009.↩
  2. “Socialism”. Wikipedia. 9 Jan 2009.↩
  3. Hirschi, Frank W. “Law of Consecration”. 1992. Encyclopedia of Mormonism. 9 Jan 2009.↩
  4. See the post the Redemption of Zion.↩
  5. Sorensen, A. Don. “Zion”. 1992. Encyclopedia of Mormonism. 9 Jan 2009.↩
  6. Nibley, Hugh W. “The Utopians.” Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. 9 Jan 2009.↩

Thomas Paine and Paper Money

November 21, 2009 in Money by Greg | 10 comments

The following is the first in a series of articles exploring the history and effects of paper money.

Thomas Paine is well known as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States as well as an author and pamphleteer. In January 1776 Mr. Paine published Common Sense, the pro-independence monograph he anonymously published shortly after his immigration to America in 1774.

In 1786 Thomas Paine wrote about the effects of paper money in comparison to Gold and Silver Coin as Tender in Payment of debts.1 He wrote:

Thomas Paine Man has no share in making gold or silver; all that his labors and ingenuity can accomplish is, to collect it from the mine, refine it for use and give it an impression, or stamp it into coin.

Its being stamped into coin adds considerably to its convenience but nothing to its value. It has then no more value than it had before. Its value is not in the impression but in itself. Take away the impression and still the same value remains. Alter it as you will, or expose it to any misfortune that can happen, still the value is not diminished. It has a capacity to resist the accidents that destroy other things. It has, therefore, all the requisite qualities that money can have, and is a fit material to make money of — and nothing which has not all those properties can be fit for the purpose of money.

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  1. Paine, Thomas. “Thomas Paine on Paper Money”. 24 Apr 2008. Ludwig von Mises Institute. 21 Nov 2009.↩

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