Betrayed by My Own Country

For the second time in my life I am feeling betrayed by my own country. The unwarranted imposition of government-controlled health care constitutes the betrayal.

The first betrayal occurred nearly forty years ago. My wife and I had just purchased a new house in a nice (integrated) neighborhood within walking distance of the university in which I was on the Mathematics faculty. Actually, a prime attraction of the house was that it was located close to an outstanding public elementary school that my kindergarten-age eldest son would attend. But less than three months into the school year, a myopic federal judge ordered my son bussed to a far away, inferior school in a ghastly neighborhood—all in furtherance of racial integration, whereas my neighborhood and my son's school were already completely integrated. I could not believe it. My liberties, my rights were being usurped. No county, state or federal legislator or executive did anything whatsoever to halt this gross miscarriage of justice.

This incident caused me to reevaluate all the political and social axioms that had governed my life. Suffice it to say that I emerged from the exercise converted from a misguided liberal into an ardent conservative. Nothing that has happened in the last four decades tells me that I made an incorrect decision.

I have felt many disappointments in that time as I watched our country slide ever closer to a Euro-socialist state. The people of the country do not appear to draw the right lessons from our: Ponzi-scheme entitlement programs; spiraling, out of control debt; government intrusion into virtually every aspect of our lives; crumbling free market system that is increasingly replaced by crony capitalism and socialist practices; debauched culture that undermines the morals, which our founders asserted were necessary for our Republic to survive; and our blatant and wanton violations of the Constitution.

But I have not felt personally betrayed as I did in the 1972-3 bussing incident—until now. I feel that the impending government takeover of health care is a personal threat to my liberty. When it is implemented, I will not have access to the doctors, hospitals and medicines that I might need in the latter part of my life. I will not be able to make the free choices that might enable me to live a longer and healthier life. Despite the clear and overwhelming opposition of the people, the radical in the White House and his socialist cronies in Congress are ramming their oppressive system down my throat. Betrayal! Whither my country?