Argument #3 for supporting the ACA

IT'S PATRIOTIC! (or, THE COMMON GOOD)

What's more patriotic than the image of our doughty Pilgrim forebears, huddled below the decks of the Mayflower in the bay at Cape Cod, preparing themselves to step onto American soil land to start a new life! But what did they do just before hitting the beach? They made themselves an agreement about how they were to act. An excerpt:

[We], in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

Talk about governmental overreach! Not a single word about me, me, me! The "general good of the colony"? Not the gross enrichment of each individual and the accumulation of tchotkes thereof? Why, it seems positively communistic, all this talk about the common good. They should have call it the Pilgrim Soviet of Plymouth!

And yet...

Patriotism and the common good have barely been spoken of during the debate, The focus has been on the mandate, and why the government has any business meddling with our precious individual liberty to act like idiots. But unlike many private vices, health is a public concern. You catch a cold, and I'm going to catch it from you. You refuse a vaccine, and a classroom full of kids gets killer diseases. You don't get preventive care, and you show up three-quarters dead on the hospital steps -- on my dime!!!!

The mad rush to maximize personal liberty AT ALL COSTS is the peculiar sickness of the "bodie politick" in our own day. Let's get patriotic and remember our founders, who went so far as to put the public good above the wishes and desires of individuals.

And while we're at it, how about some socialist Commie twaddle from another bunch of radicals?

"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."