WurfWhile

I disagree with Bill Baar’s stance against SCHIP funding, which provides children with subsidized health insurance when their working parents are of modest means and (in most cases) unable to afford private health coverage. Baar quotes Harold Ickes’ “What is an American?” in support of his position and suggests that Congressman Biggert use that to counter me in my blog entry here (and see my ‘mea culpa’ about the title here (to be put up next)). Ironically, I agree with Bill’s use of the Ickes speech - I just disagree with his interpretation of it. As an American I agree with “a future when free men will live free lives in dignity and in security” and that “An American is one in whose heart is engraved the immortal second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.”

What is the second sentence of 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.” Please note the word “liberty.”

I expand on Bill’s use of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes with what his boss, the President, said less than three years later in the “Second Bill of Rights” made during Roosevelts’ 1944 State of the Union Address:

“This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded - these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all - regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.”

I repeat Roosevelt’s words, Americans have “The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health” - it is what “America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon.”

Bill Baar and those he points to seem to view freedom in the famous words of Janis Joplin (Kris Kristofferson) as “just another word/For nothin’ left to lose/And nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’, but it’s free.” Roosevelt, and it seems Ickes, believed that freedom wasn’t enough, that “Necessitous men are not free men” and therefore some basic rights, including health care, are necessary to provide people with sufficient security to act independently. In other words they believed in liberty, freedom from the arbitrary use of power (i.e. freedom under law (governance)). Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States envisioned Americans living in liberty and equality*, under law. Providing health care, especially to our children, is the moral thing to do and in keeping with the American tradition. Not to do so is something else.

Notes

* The 3/5 clause and women’s sufferage are obvious and notable exceptions to equality - but both were against the greater spirit of the Constitution, and being aberrations have since (if at great cost) been corrected.