I was pootering about New Hampshire not too long ago and fell deeply in love with their motto ‘Live Free or Die’. They don’t pay income tax! Bliss. Sparsely populated, small villages nestle amongst dense forests. Utilities are arranged by local consensus, possibly everyone for themselves (a cesspit) or chipping-in for a communal service.
This is the American dream – that every person gets to live or die by their own hand, under neither the patronage nor tyranny of any other. This belief is only tenable when your resources far outstrip your needs. While every person can stake their claim, grow their crops, build their businesses – creating real growth by consuming uncontended resources and serving unmet needs.
In this instance, for the sake of relative brevity, we will forgo the living rebuke which is the Native American population.
Universal healthcare cuts into the heart of this now-rotten dream. In the dream world its every man for himself and everyone prospers. Accepting that everyone needs to chip-in to help out their fellow men is to accept that they can not prosper. It is to accept that growth without consequences is at an end. It is to accept that you can no longer live without responsibility.
That’s why poor-white-male America is so poisonously bitter. Its why republicans (with a small ‘r’) are choking on their bile. They have lived with this unacknowledged truth for some time. Its been a canker in their miserable souls.
To allow universal coverage in would be to face up to their deepest fears – and there’s not many people who do that without a fight.
