Rhetoric

Surely I can't be the only one to recognize the rhetoric has changed. Of course not, but as the mainstream media (MSM) would like to believe, most people have short memories. And I confess that I, too, have been guilty of this.

What, pray tell, am I talking about? Haven't you noticed? Well, I'm not surprised. The MSM has been very effective in pulling the wool over our eyes.

Do you remember, oh...a year ago, when the MSM was forcing their opinions down our throats about how desperately we needed health care reform? Oh, but not just any ol' health care reform. We needed the government's health care and for them to provide it for us. You know, the ludicrous notion that the government could control and regulate our health care and through these means it would be the most efficient, effective means to cover every man, woman, and child? By golly, the government is the answer to ALL our problems and that's that!

And do you remember when President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid were all saying that they were looking to cross the aisle and invite the Repulicans over to gain bipatisan support? And how about when the Dems started having hissyfits because the Republicans were shooting down all their wonderful ideas, thus essentially shutting them out of all of the discussions? Remember that? What about when they said the Republicans were just stonewalling? That they didn't have any ideas of their own but were only trying to get in the way of progress?

Well, do you? Is any of this ringing a bell? As it turns out, the Republicans did have a few good ideas. But the MSM would never let you know that. They were too busy misconstruing the facts and holding interviews with Barack Obama during the Super Bowl giving him face time and infomercials to promote his agenda. They were even more concerned about Obama's legacy than the facts.

It was pretty much the norm for the MSM, wasn't it? They did everything they could to get our focus off the main issues and only look at the agenda they were promoting. They disregarded intelligent discussions regarding the bill. If someone actually read the bill, that was amazing in itself. But for someone to look at what was actually being drafted and then use insightful and intelligent deductive reasoning to conclude something would happen as a result, he/she was met with hostility from the MSM and the administration and was made to look like a fool. Because the words "death panels," "abortion," or "rationed-care" didn't appear anywhere in the bill, the liberals mocked and scorned such views or ideas.

Now fast-forward the talk in the MSM today. After, of course, they infamously pass a watered-down version of the healthcare bill with a rarely used procedure known as the "deem and pass rule." (Of course, don't be fooled. Many amendments have been and will be on its way to tack on even more unfavorable parts of the bill they were forced to leave out initially.) Ironically, the MSM has now found an unusual disposition toward cutting healthcare costs.

Before the passing of the bill, all you could hear about was that this much-needed reform was the answer to our problems. Get everybody on board, insure everyone no matter the cost, and let the government administrate it all. Raise our taxes, raise our premiums, do whatever it takes. Let's vilify the insurance industry. They're the evil ones. But above all, let's get it passed. Our nation will suffer without it.

It was such bologna then, and it's bologna now. It was like the important thing was let's just get something done. Even if it isn't perfect. Let's just get this passed and then we can take care of the details.

What they weren't saying, though, is that it wasn't all true. For one, the insurance industry isn't the villain. That's like blaming the car dealers for the cost of an automobile without taking into account the cost of the parts and labor to assemble it. Can the insurance industry do things more efficiently to "help" reduce the cost? Of course. But let's not be naive to believe that insurance companies and brokers set arbitrary premiums for the sole purpose of profit. Are they in business to make a profit? Absolutely. And so is every other for-profit company doing business under the free market system. It works because of the risk and reward drivers that navigate it.

Business is not the enemy. If you believe that the capitalist economic system is the root of our problems, may I suggest you think about the alternative? What's the opposite of capitalism? Communism actually. But let's not kid ourselves on this subject. Even socialism has more public ownership than private. In any case, with socialism or communism you're putting the emphasis on the public working together toward a common goal to ensure success. This sound like a great concept, but logic tells us that people put more effort into working hard and efficiently when they have a personal stake in the outcome. According to James D. Gwartney, capitalism is a system that encourages a person to use their abilities to strive to succeed. It gives incentives to take risks and either reap its rewards or learn from its failures. The American model of this system has allowed this nation to rise above its competing systems of socialist and communistic economies throughout the rest of the world. All socialism and communism do is discourage personal success and limit the abilities for people to succeed beyond the scope of the government. This sounds more like enslavement than the freedoms we enjoy in America due to the political and economic system that was established by our forefathers.

But I digress. First, the misconceptions about the insurance industry wasn't true. Then it was the polls, the statistics, and the outright lies that were being fed by the MSM to get people to believe that unless the healthcare plan as proposed by President Obama and his colleagues was passed, our economy and life as we know it will get exponentially worse. They made us believe it was either now or never. That this was the best solution on the table.

However, the problem was not just with Obama's healthcare plan having issues of its own, the MSM was disregarding any input that was being presented by the Republicans. In fact, they were making every effort to either deny there were any such plans or ideas by the other party or they were discrediting any viable ideas and best as they knew how.

The part of all of this that probably upsets me the most though? The MSM seems to be doing an about 180 and are now reiterating many of the same suggestions the Republicans were trying to bring to light before the passing of the horrendous bill. But it's not about making sure that people can have affordable health care. It's about ensuring that the Democrat's healthcare plan is viable. To accomplish this, they need to help the administration cut costs in healthcare in every conceivable way. So they bring forth the cost-cutting and efficient measures that the Republicans were suggesting (when they believed that these ideas would help make insurance affordable without destroying our previous system) and are now using them to try to make healthcare affordable within the structure of the plan. This, of course, will bring about the rationing of care, which the liberals intensely denied would happen before the bill was passed. Now they assert that it's a near certainty that it will.

The proposals by the liberals are disingenuous at best. Before the passing of this horrendous bill, discussions could have been made about how Americans could do more to help make health care more affordable. NOW liberals are opening up to the different possibilities previously disregarded. In the Des Moines Register, they NOW talk about how "cutting health care costs begin with us." They argue that more health care is not necessarily better health care. Another article writes how miraculously there's NOW a change in how often breast cancer screening is needed. THIS kind of hypocrisy just infuriates me!

If there was ever a time that we needed new leadership in our government, it is now. I cannot believe the American people as a whole are satisfied with the direction the current administration is taking us. We need to remember how the liberals and the MSM misguided the American people during the whole health care debate. We need to remember how they redirected our focus on frivolous matters. How they kept the public from recognizing the many ways in how this administration was slowly and meticulously leading us down the slippery path toward socialism. We need to hold them accountable.

First, we need to be proactive and support solid, conservative-minded candidates. We cannot afford to sit on the sidelines anymore and just let politics happen. We need to get Christian conservatives values out there again and make them relevant in the arena of public opinion. Too long have we allowed liberals to have their voice and to ingratiate us with their liberal views such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and removing God from public consciousness. If we do nothing, we only have ourselves to blame.

Then, we need to replace how we receive our news: information and communication. I believe there has to be a delicate balance in understanding the opponents' points of view, but we can replace journalists and reporters that are slanted in their liberal biases. We need to counteract the liberals' strategy of controlling the media. Unfortunately, even now, the government is trying to control how we receive our information. But we can have a vote, and that is with our dollars. We should not support those organizations that do not promote Christian conservative values. We need to find those conservative voices out in the wilderness and support them and help change the public perception back to Biblical principles.

Remember what Edmund Burke said...

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”