Liberals are the most faithful to the American heritage

Some folks on the conservative right in America (Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians/ Libertarians/ Constitutional Party Members/ NeoCon Republicans etc) are asserting that no one has the “right” to Health care.

I’ll suppose at one level that they are correct. Life is certainly as much a matter of responsibility as of rights.

Maybe no human being has even the “right” to food and water, let alone health care.

Perhaps our world will do best if we accept the thesis of the “survival of the fittest”.

(Not to be snide, but it’s strange that Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians would buy into an evolutionary world view).

Religion and Politics apart, here are some quotations from the Declaration of Independence, and the Preamble to the Constitution.

From the Declaration of Independence

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Preamble to the U.S.A. Constitution.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Maybe I am naïve. But I suggest that the “right” to life and to the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence could include the right to decent health care. (How much life and pursuit of happiness do those Americans without decent health care enjoy?)

And, if there is a “right” to life and the pursuit of happiness as expressed in the Declaration, ought not the peoples’ Senators and Representatives-in-Congress have these rights as a priority in their deliberations?

Briefly, lest I bore you, Does or does not the desire to form a “more perfect Union” as written in the Preamble to the Constitution include the words “ to promote the general Welfare”?” (Well it does)

And might not, I pray you, the “general Welfare” include the best possible, AND most accessible Health Care system?

We have always believed that the Federal Government has been the best agency to ensure our “common defence” (our Armed Forces) as part of a “more perfect union”.

Let’s suppose that that same Federal Government could also be the best agency to ensure the “general welfare” in the pursuit of “life” as expressed in the Declaration, and as experieced in decent and afforable health care for all