PrintSeptember 9, 2009
The Camel's Nose
It is a wise rule to resist the beginnings of evil.- Horace Scudder, The Book of Fables and Folk Stories
The story of the camel's nose tends lately to be a bit overused. But it is an apt allegory for most of the programs foisted on us by the government. What appear to be reasonable legislative acts often become, over time, burdensome and costly. The current discussion in particular -- health care reform (so called) -- is a case in point.
There has been a concerted effort all summer by American citizens to let their representatives in Congress know that the reform as given in HR 3200 is not wanted. But Congress and the president are determined to come up with some kind of reform and force a government run health program on the country. So Congress has heard the protests, and they are now trying to come up with some kind of watered down plan that will be acceptable to both the right and left in congress so that it will pass. The problem is that once any such government run program is passed and becomes law, no matter how innocuous it is, two things will happen.
First, implementation will be turned over to bureaucrats and they will find all kinds of miscellaneous wording that will allow them to take actions never envisioned by the framers of the law. And those bureaucrats will apply the rules with all of the police power the law gives them.
Second, the law will be used as a base to add all sorts of additional bells and whistles in the future. These add-on laws will eventually give us a convoluted legislative mess that will be as bad if not worse than a watered down form of HR 3200. It may take years, but it will happen. And it will be more costly and more draconian and bureaucratic than anything we can think of today.
So any compromise bill, reduced bill, anything that smacks of health care control by the government will be the camel's nose in the tent. First the nose, then the forelegs, then the body, and finally the entire camel. We will have what the socialist left of the country wanted in the first place. It will just take a little longer.
We must keep up the pressure and "resist the beginnings of evil." Write your representatives in congress; attend Tea Parties; let them know that any bill, in any form, that impacts our health care is not acceptable.
Walt Bussey, a retired computer systems analyst, has a blog at anwjournal.typepad.com.
