{"id":4310,"date":"2011-01-18T11:28:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-18T19:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=4310"},"modified":"2011-01-18T11:28:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-18T19:28:00","slug":"fiercely-independent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=4310","title":{"rendered":"Fiercely Independent"},"content":{"rendered":"

While I’m sitting here eating my lunch, I’m staring at an article with the headline \u201cAs House healthcare debate begins, report finds millions of Americans have preexisting medical conditions<\/a>\u201d. I\u2019m musing about the upcoming attempt to repeal the health care legislation, and how this is happening in the face of budgetary studies that show the legislation will save the government loads of money and reduce the deficit, and other polls that show there is little support in reality for full repeal.<\/p>\n

So why is there such horror at the legislation in some circles? Is it just because Obama came up with it? Is it just the tyranny of the outliers (a subject I plan to write about as soon as my laptop comes back from Geek Squad)? I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

I think the primary objection in this debate is the fiercely independent nature of many Americans. We don\u2019t want the government to tell us what we must<\/i> do. We don\u2019t want the government telling us we must eat this and not that. We don\u2019t want to be told to wear our seatbelts and our motorcycle helmits. We don\u2019t want to be told we have to buy health or automobile insurance. We don\u2019t want to be we must do this or that in order to protect the safety of all. We just don\u2019t want to be told what to do. That\u2019s why there\u2019s the hatred of this. <\/p>\n

On the other hand, we love it when our government tells us what not to do. We love the rules that tell insururers they can\u2019t behave this way or that way. We love placing rules on the populace that tell us what we cannot do in our personal lives. You can\u2019t smoke that — good rule. You can\u2019t marry that — good rule. You can\u2019t drink this. You can\u2019t have that medical procedure. The same folks who object to mandated insurance love to tell me what I can\u2019t do.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure where I\u2019m going with this. As I said, these were just musings. Perhaps I just wish people would think a bit more and simply react a bit less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I’m sitting here eating my lunch, I’m staring at an article with the headline \u201cAs House healthcare debate begins, report finds millions of Americans have preexisting medical conditions\u201d. I\u2019m musing about the upcoming attempt to repeal the health care legislation, and how this is happening in the face of budgetary studies that show the Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[347],"class_list":["post-4310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lj-xfer","tag-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}