Henri Reynard Speaks Out

On The Right Hand?

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Most of the things that I write are wildly critical of the Right Wing view of reality, anyone who would criticize intelligently must attempt to understand that which they would criticize. So I am attempting to understand the right of all-of-this social phenomenon that we call government. The Right wing of our society is working to establish its social and political agendas as the mainstream choices for our society. What are their main points of argument for their main issues and the key points of policy differentiation that they believe that we should pursue in order to change our current system? Today they have the major control points in regard to governing our nation with control of the Administrative and Legislative branches of Government. They are likely to control the Courts completely by the end of this decade. Our, "Free Press", is owned by companies whose interests are clearly aligned with the conservative point of view. One author defines the ownership of the Press in this nation as being held by a total of only six companies. So what I am examining here is quite possibly our roadmap for the future.

The topic needs a little clear definition in order to be articulated sensibly. The areas of interest and differences of position are clearly not simple nor are they understandable in an aggregated form. So only a few of the far-reaching areas of policy and social change promoted by the Right Wing of the governing party are analyzed here.

Medical care is an issue for a lot of Americans today. We have invented a medical system that is extremely costly and often too self absorbed to provide high-quality care. It is ruled by a hodge-podge of interests ranging from Drug Companies, Insurance Companies, State, Local and Federal Regulators, HMO's and consumers of medical insurance and direct-pay medical services. The answer in the eyes of the Right is to shuffle around the players and align the interests of the government to bring them closer to the interests of the providing companies. The providers are largely Insurance companies and HMO's often owned by insurance companies. In this scheme the government puts the insurance companies in greater control of the medical care available to the citizen of this country by removing the government from any direct role as a alternative provider of medical coverage. Instead, at most, the government will collect taxes and pay them out as fees to the private companies that must profit from that arrangement in order for it to remain viable. Further privatization of care and greater dominance of care option definitions by the insurance providers will inevitably result. Will that be good for us as individuals and as a Society?

That could be a really difficult question to answer unless you are willing to look at the options fairly and respectfully. Other nations provide better care for their citizens as measured by one of the key ingredients to health, longevity. We are the lowest nation in the list of industrial nations in terms of longevity. One reason for that is the fact that our health system is only providing sixty percent of us with any coverage at all. The other forty percent cannot afford even the simplest level of health care insurance. Diagnosis and treatment of many easily curable diseases and health problems that can be reduced in severity is seriously hampered by this one fact. Ten years from now if the roadmap for our health care services proposed by the Right is followed this problem will not be better and is more than likely to be worse.

Retirement funds are another major area of concern for most Americans. I admit that I have lived more as the grasshopper than the ant myself so I am in that group. Social Security is a minimal support system for those past the age where they can work enough to provide for their own care. That age is highly variable. My mother retired at seventy-five after working for her last five years in a nursing home where in her last year working most of the residents were younger than she. I hope to be able to continue to function on into my seventies but eventually we all will wear out parts that are irreplaceable and if we survive, we will need to retire. If the current program of reducing taxes on the wealthy and transferring resources from the retirement fund into the general fund continues Social Security will fail. The transfer of funds from Social Security (FICA) in order to make up part of the revenue short-fall that the tax cuts engender constitutes an increasingly regressive tax policy. It is putting more of the burden for general fund services on the taxes collected from the poorest taxpayers for the retirement fund. That will inevitably lead to failure of our retirement system and is patently destructive of the purpose for which those taxes were collected. To provide for the security of aging workers who build this nation with their labor because they have no other way to contribute. Those dollars were taken from all of the poorest employed people in the nation for that purpose, it is a crime to steal from that fund in order to provide a huge tax cut to a very few wealthy citizens.
Abortion is an issue for most citizens of this nation. I have watched it grow as an issue in the last forty years until it has perverted our politics and demeaned our civil debate to a level where people are killing doctors and burning down clinics in order to demonstrate the force of their convictions. To quote a famous man, "Democracy is messy", but violence is not an accepted part of democratic action. It is a perversion of our freedoms based in our democracy to imply that violence is the right of democratic action! Abortion is an undesirable solution to a problem that could be better mediated by other means. Education in other means of birth control would help, but the same people who deny girls that vital education will demand that they then carry the child to term.

The real issue is, does society rule the body of the pregnant woman while the fetus is unable to live outside her womb? Is that sort of government desirable rather than one that depends on the moral structure of our society to limit the use of abortion? If you are an advocate of limited government how can you tolerate that level of intrusion into individual life? I have no respect for the argument that the fetus is a viable life until the last few weeks of pregnancy. Try keeping a premature child alive without medical care that costs a thousand dollars or more a day. When the same people who argue against universal medical care want the right to regulate the life of a woman pregnant with a potentially viable life inside her I am amazed once again at the flexibility of the human mind. If you want to be responsible for that life in one way how is it not your social responsibility to be responsible for that life in all other ways that count? If we want to regulate the procreative function by banning abortion how can we avoid being responsible for those children created by that level of regulation. The same people who are crying for life for that child will be crying for its death when neglected and uncared for it joins a gang and commits a violent murder at sixteen.

One more thing, I think we are in for an uncomfortable period in our history. We have done ugly things in our past. Slavery and the destruction of the indigenous populations on our continent are two of the major evils our society has perpetrated during its history. There are always fresh abominations possible when you have great power and faith in the essential rightness of your cause. We have determined that we should define what is right for the whole world in the last two years. It is obvious to many of us that the root of that active role in world affairs is in our fear of terrorism and all that it implies. The uncertainty of life as it is lived on most continents is making us incontinent. Our arguments in favor of preemptive war do not hold water.

It is the splendid isolation of two oceans that have allowed us to remain aloof for this long. Now we have cast ourselves in the role of liberator, it is at the same time as we are swiftly becoming more repressive at home. We have a military second to none on the globe. Our tools of war are sharp indeed; we have conquered Babylon, where the rule of law was born. It is our adherence to that rule of law that sets us above all of the conquering nations in the history of the world. Our behavior in the next several years will set the tone of this new century for the whole world. If we are the arrogant conqueror the world will respond one way; if we are the true democracy they will respond another. We get to choose which world we will have to live in during the next half century in the next five years. If it is an increasingly open world with common interests pursued together by most of the nations of the world it will be because we were worthy of the great ideas that gave birth to this nation. They were not ideas that supported the right of conquest in order to disarm our enemies.

The founders never contemplated such an act by a democracy. Perhaps they misunderstood the profundity of fear created by terrorism? Of course they had only hostile Indians at the frontier, war with the greatest military power on earth and disease without modern medicine to cope with. Their average life span was less than half of ours, and their children died in droves. They only understood a little but very important thing, it is in dignity and honor and freedom that humanity aspires to the greatest things that humans can do. If we bring dignity and honor to our conquered enemies, a difficult thing to do, we will help them fulfill their future as free people. The founders of our nation also understood that the government is not the friend of the citizen, and it may easily become their oppressor. You of the Right have had your short victorious war, Remember that you now are creating the world we will all live in for the rest of our lives. Try to keep your actions consistent with your high-flying rhetoric for a change. Otherwise you will meet with the disgust merited by lies too large to hide and to ugly to ignore. Even when they are told by a giant! God bless and keep you, our troops and our protestors safe in these trying times.