In arguing with liberals over, well, everything, I’ve come to realize that many of their arguments are decidedly weak. They say, “We HAVE to do something about [Global Warming, Healthcare, The price of brownies] now! We might not understand the problem completely but we can’t just continue the way we are! There isn’t time!”
Many years ago when I worked with the volunteer fire department one of our mantra’s was, “Don’t just do something; stand there”. We didn’t come up with the phrase, of course, but we used the heck out of it. In an emergency it is often very easy to just jump on the problem and start kicking it. The idea that they wanted to get across to us was that we shouldn’t be jumping into a situation without understanding it. That gets you hurt, or killed, and can make the situation worse.
Don’t just do something; stand there. Stop. Consider the situation. Develop a plan. Action it. If the parameters change then do it again but don’t rush headlong into a situation and make it worse.
Don’t spend a trillion dollars on a healthcare bill that doesn’t DO anything. Don’t justify spending a trillion dollars on a bill that really only does one thing because “healthcare costs are spiraling out of control!”
Don’t sell a a bill that could be summarized with a one sentence law. All of it, all 2000 pages and 1 trillion dollars could be replaced by a single law that reads, “Thou shalt not deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions”. Throw a paragraph of explanations around what that means and a few disclaimers and you have a useful law. The current bill is just doing something for the sake of doing something. It destroys existing systems. It rapes medicare/caid. It robs Peter to pay Paul. It does something without understanding what it’s doing and why. It is setting us up for a disaster.
I’m going to a GOOOH meeting tomorrow night. I want to see what it’s all about. To understand how it’s going to work in detail. I’ve decided that I don’t care about splitting the vote any more. The goal of GOOOH is to replace every member of the House with laymen as it was originally intended to be and get rid of the career politicians. Even if they aren’t able to do that. Even if they can only replace 5 or 10 or 20 I think that it’ll make a difference. If nothing else, it’ll wake the two monster parties (and more important, Americans) up to the fact that grass roots efforts can and will put them out of jobs. It’s time. The two parties are fighting like 3 year olds. They’re slamming laws through and eating away at our rights bit by bit. They’re taking more and more of our money. It’s time to send them a wakeup call. It’s time to stop standing there and do something.