Kathleen Sebelius: The Latest Member of the Federal Politburo

Introduction: Ronald Reagan Saw Every Major War and Political Movement During the 20th Century

Ronald Reagan, a man who once was a card-carrying member of the Democratic Party as recently as the early 1960's, converted to the GOP in the early 1960's because of his belief -- and correctly so -- that government was growing too large, too intrusive, too tyrannical. Not surprisingly, included within these beliefs was his thoughts on socialized medicine. You see, Reagan was born in 1911, lived through both world wars, the Korean War, and was at the beginning of the Vietnam conflict. He also saw the birth of Communism with Red October in 1917 and its final fall at the end of 1991; the rise of Fascism following World War I, followed by its descent into the sunset in 1945. But he also saw a rise of yet another international phenomena that begat economic ruin in the nations which manifested it and would propagate the practice of its principles for decades: European socialism.

The first nation where this took hold was none other than our mother country, the United Kingdom, and its origins lie largely within the hands of the Labour Party. Founded in 1900, the Labour Party overtook the Liberal Party in general elections in 1920.  But perhaps its greatest impact on the British government and the people of Great Britain was after a White Paper in 1944 it fell to Clement Attlee's Labour government to create the NHS as part of the "cradle to grave" welfare-state reforms in the aftermath of World War II. Aneurin Bevan, the newly appointed Minister of Health, was given the task of introducing the National Health Service. Doctors were initially opposed to Bevan's plan, primarily on the stated grounds that it reduced their level of independence. Bevan had to get them onside, as, without doctors, there would be no health service. Being a shrewd political operator, Bevan managed to push through the radical health care reform measure by dividing and cajoling the opposition, as well as by offering lucrative payment structures for consultants. On this subject he stated, "I stuffed their mouths with gold". On  July 5, 1948, at the Park Hospital (now known as Trafford General Hospital) in Manchester, Bevan unveiled the National Health Service and stated, "We now have the moral leadership of the world."

The cost of the new NHS soon took its toll on government finances. On 21 April 1951 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Gaitskell, proposed that there should be a one shilling (5p) prescription charge and new charges for half the cost of dentures and spectacles. Bevan resigned from the Cabinet in protest. This led to a split in the party that contributed to the electoral defeat of the Labour government in 1951. The one shilling prescription charge was introduced in 1952 together with a £1 flat rate fee for ordinary dental treatment. Prescription charges were abolished in 1965, but re-introduced in June 1968.

The criticisms of the NHS are as follows:

1. Some extremely expensive treatments may be available in some areas but not in others, the so-called postcode lottery.
2. The National Programme for IT which was designed to provide the infrastructure for electronic prescribing, booking appointments and elective surgery, and a national care records service. The program ran into delays and overspends before it was finally abandoned.
3. There has been a decreasing availability of NHS dentistry following the new government contract and a trend towards dentists accepting private patients only, with 1 in 10 dentists having left the NHS totally.
4. There have been a number of high-profile scandals within the NHS. Most recently there have been scandals at acute hospitals such as at Alder Hey and at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Stafford Hospital is currently under investigation for poor conditions and inadequacies that statistical analysis has shown caused excess deaths.
5. A 14 October 2008 article in The Daily Telegraph stated, "An NHS trust has spent more than £12,000 on private treatment for hospital staff because its own waiting times are too long." 
6. In January 2010, the NHS was accused of allocating £4 million annually on homeopathic medicines, which are unsupported by scientific research.
7. The absence of identity/residence checks on patients at clinics and hospitals allows people who ordinarily reside overseas to travel to the UK for the purpose of obtaining free treatment, at the expense of the UK taxpayer. A report published in 2007 estimates that the NHS bill for treatment of so-called ‘health tourists’ was £30m, 0.03% of the total cost.

The contribution of the NHS to the national deficit in Britain is astounding. As of Q1 2013 the national debt amounted to £1,377.4 billion, or 90.7% of total GDP. The annual cost of servicing the public debt amounts to around £43bn, or roughly 3% of GDP. This is roughly the same size as the British defense budget. It is forecast to rise to 95.6% of total GDP in 2013, further rising to 98.7% of GDP in 2014. Due to the Government's significant budget deficit, which must be financed by borrowing, the national debt is increasing by approximately £121 billion per year, or around £2.3 billion each week.

According to UK Public Spending's figures, the following is known about the contribution of public funding to health to the national debt since about 1900:

The Steady Growth of Health Expenditures

Public spending for health services increased steadily through most of the 20th century, from 0.3 percent of GDP to six percent of GDP by 1980. Followin a mild decline in the 1980s and 1990s, health spending increased rapidly in the 2000s past eight percent of GDP.

Chart 4: Health Spending 1900-2011

Click image for numbers or to customize chart

At the beginning of the 20th century, government spent about 0.5 percent of GDP on health. But spending began to increase in 1909 after passage of the National Insurance Act, reaching 1.14 percent of GDP in 1921.

Health spending increased steadily in the 1920s and 1930s reaching 1.91 percent of GDP at the start of World War II. Spending kept steady during the war and then increased briskly after the war, reaching 3.07 percent just before the National Health Service was set up in 1948.

Costs rose sharply in the early years of the NHS, reaching 3.6 percent of GDP by 1950 and then dropping to 3.0 percent of GDP by 1955. Spending increased steadily after the mid 1950s, running at about 3.5 percent of GDP in the early 1960s and increasing to 4.0 percent of GDP by 1970 and peaking at 4.98 percent of GDP in 1975.

Health spending declined in the late 1970s, down to 4.7 percent of GDP in 1979 and increased thereafter, reaching 5.64 percent of GDP in 1983 before beginning a decline to 5.16 percent in 1988. Then spending jolted upwards, reaching 6.31 percent of GDP by 1993 before a steep decline to 4.91 percent of GDP in 1998.

Spending began increasing sharply after 1999, and is expected to reach a planned expenditures of 8.43 percent of GDP in 2010.

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Thus, perhaps the greatest source of British public spending profligacy rests on the shoulders of socialized health care. And, ironically, it was also around the time of the 1940's that Britain, for more than 350 years having assumed the mantle as the world's most powerful nation, lost its empire upon India gaining independence in 1947. It now is no longer a great nation, but the latest footnote in history of past great empires such as that of Rome falling by the wayside.  No nation who has ever operated under the economic and financial burdens of socialism, whatever the form, has ever existed successfully for a period of more than a few decades without at the very least fading into obscurity.  

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Ronald Reagan Knew in 1961 What Socialized Medicine Would Amount to in America Today

So often, Republican Party members refer to the wit and wisdom of the party's co-founding philosopher. Reagan, as stated above as well as many other times in previous articles on this blog, was once a Democrat, a New Deal Democrat from the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whereupon no other previous president before and perhaps none since has engaged in the sheer magnitude of public spending on federal programs. It is true that FDR introduced America to the welfare state and socialism, that he was the most profligate spending of taxpayer dollars in U.S. history in his implementation and maintenance of those public expenditure programs, and furthermore, increasing the size of government at the highest percentage in a single term in office of any of his predecessors or those who would succeed in U.S. history. Overtime, however, Reagan saw this phenomena occurring, the expansion of government into the people's private lives, and he grew to detest this practice.  Wikipedia claims upon my reading of its article on Reagan that he officially joined the GOP in 1962, but it appears as if his beliefs of more popular self-autonomy over its well-being was being nurtured and fostered into philosophical wisdom that would see the greatest period of U.S. economic and foreign strength during the years of the Reagan Revolution from 1981-1991 than at any other time in the nation's history. The Left argues that Reagan oversaw what at the time of his presidency was the largest increase in federal deficit spending in our nation's history, and it was, but what they forget to tell the American people are two things: 1) Reagan would not have had to embark on such a policy of deficit spending had he not had to rescue the military from the type of malaise our economy had been rendered to under the presidency of Jimmy Carter, and 2) Had Congress had agreed to the massive public expenditure cuts Reagan had outlined in his budget proposals, it would certainly not have occurred to the extreme that it did.  Let us not forget, either, that throughout his presidency, Reagan called for a constitutional amendment to create a balanced budget, yet Congress failed in acting upon this initiative. As a result of the Democrats' superior politicizing of the issue of Reagan's increasing the deficit despite their lack of initiative to act upon his proposals for budget cuts and a balanced budget constitutional amendment, "The Gipper" gets the blame while they were ironically viewed as the party of fiscal righteousness.

In 1961, Reagan, then still in show business, had already begun becoming politically-active in promoting conservative initiatives. It was at about this time that talk had begun in Washington during John F. Kennedy's first year in office of creating a form of socialized health care. Those horrified conservative Republicans, as well as Reagan. That same year, Reagan made a public service announcement over the radio decrying the issue and stating his reasons for panning the proposal:

Unfortunately, his voice would not be heard. In 1965, Medicare was established, and shortly thereafter was Medicaid under President Lyndon B. Johnson, and enormous amounts of public debt were incurred based largely on those programs. Even President Obama, a member of the party who created socialized health care in America, stated the following according to the "independent" webpage PolitiFact.org, run by The Tampa Bay Times:

"Medicare and Medicaid are the single biggest drivers of the federal deficit and the federal debt by a huge margin."

Barack Obama on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 in a town hall meeting

Obama says Medicare and Medicaid are largest deficit drivers. Yes, over the long term.

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During a town hall on health care, an audience member asked President Barack Obama about the cost of health care reform, and whether the government could afford to do it.

Obama's answer was a variation on the sales pitch, Can you afford not to?

"I think it's a very legitimate question," Obama began. "I guess that the first point I'd make is, if we don't do anything, costs are going to go out of control. Nobody disputes this. Medicare and Medicaid are the single biggest drivers of the federal deficit and the federal debt by a huge margin."

If we don't do something soon to rein in health care costs, Obama said, Medicare and Medicaid "will consume all of the federal budget."

We decided to check his statement that "Medicare and Medicaid are the single biggest drivers of the federal deficit and the federal debt by a huge margin."

We consulted a number of experts, both left-leaning and right-leaning, and they agreed that over the long term, Medicare and Medicaid, along with Social Security — the programs popularly known as "entitlements" — will indeed overwhelm the federal budget and are the main drivers of the deficit. (Of the three programs, Medicare is the largest by a significant margin.)

But there's also some explaining to do about Obama's statement.

When he talks about Medicare and Medicaid driving the deficit, he's not talking about 2009. The 2009 deficit will be powered primarily by the economic downturn, both spending on stimulus and bailouts, and lost tax revenues from the lack of economic activity. The Bush tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the recent Medicare prescription drug benefit have also created gaps between spending and revenues in recent years.

But Obama's singling out of Medicare and Medicaid is true over a much longer window of time, say, over the next 50 to 75 years.

Now, that may strike you — as it did us — as too far in the future to worry about. But the economists we spoke to are definitely worried about it right now.

A coalition of diverse think tanks — the Concord Coalition, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation — teamed up several years ago for a "Fiscal Wake Up Tour" to alert people across the political spectrum about the poor outlook for the budget over the long term.

"Unless lawmakers promptly reform Social Secu­rity, Medicare, and Medicaid, America faces a future of soaring taxes and government spending that will cause poor economic performance," wrote Brian Riedl, an economist with the conservative Heritage Foundation, who participated in the tour.

"Americans will pay onerous taxes, and future generations will have lower living standards than Americans enjoy today," he said. "The longer lawmakers wait to enact the necessary reforms, the more painful those reforms will be."

How bad could things get? The nonpartisan Concord Coalition, citing data models from the Government Accountability Office, found that by 2027, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and net interest would consume all revenues collected by the federal government. By 2047, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alone would consume all revenues. By 2052, the model is untenable, because the economy is in ruins. Gulp!

So if Obama is right that Medicare and Medicaid are driving the deficit, then health care reform can fix the long-term deficit, right?

Wrong.

"We have to do everything we can on the health care side, and then certainly there's going to be even more that we have to do," said James Horney, director of federal fiscal policy at the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. "Don't assume we can wave the wand on health care reform and that will take care of everything."

Obama has said many times that he wants health care reform to slow the growth of health care spending. But note the words slow the growth  — that doesn't mean a reduction in overall health care spending.

"Even if we significantly cut back the growth in health spending every year for the next 75 years, we still need more revenues to pay for our current obligations," said Ben Harris, a senior research associate at Brookings and the Tax Policy Center. "There's a need for a dramatic cut in spending or some way to raise more revenue, whether it's a new tax or raising an existing tax."

That's where the economists disagree: Whether to cut spending or raise taxes. But we found little disagreement over the underlying problem.

So going back to Obama's statement, Obama said, "Medicare and Medicaid are the single biggest drivers of the federal deficit and the federal debt by a huge margin." But we do need to add the caveat that Medicare and Medicaid growth is a long-term problem, not what's driving the deficits of this year or the next few years. We rate his statement Mostly True.

Harris speaks about the necessity of cutting back the growth in health spending, followed by the phrase, "...some way to raise more revenue, whether it's a new tax or raising an existing tax." That last phrase reminds me of another Reaganism which has been true throughout the history of the United States over the past century:

"No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!

Hence, we have today's drudgery with Obama Care. The consequences it will have on society are ominous, as one report I read no more than two months ago claimed that it is conservatively estimated that approximately 800,000 American jobs will be laid-off as a result of this program. Apparently, the Obama administration has grown aware of its own folly by signing this bill into law that it moved to postpone the employer. The article I choose to post to discuss this issue is courtesy of Time Magazine:  

Obama Administration Delays Health Care Law Employer Penalty Until 2015

Republican former CBO director calls decision "deviously brilliant"

By Zeke J Miller @zekejmillerJuly 02, 2013 

The Obama Administration announced on Tuesday that it is delaying implementing a key component of the Affordable Care Act for a year following complaints from the private sector about reporting requirements.

The so-called employer mandate, which penalizes employers with more than 50 employees if they fail to provide a minimum standard of affordable health insurance, was set to kick in in 2014, but now will take effect in 2015, the Treasury Department announced in a blog post first reported by Bloomberg News. The delay not only allows the Administration time to alleviate concerns among business owners, but also takes a controversial component of the law off the table before the midterm elections.

The vast majority of employers that already provide coverage to their employees raised concerns about burdensome reporting requirements under the law, a complaint the Administration is particularly sensitive to. Companies that don’t meet the law’s requirements now have an extra year to alter their policies.

(MORE: Why Our Health Care Lets Prices Run Wild)

“We have been in a dialogue with businesses and we think we can simplify the new reporting — we want to give businesses who want to provide health insurance the time to get this right,” a senior Administration official said, explaining the delay. “Just like our effort to turn the 21-page application for health insurance into a three-page application, we are working hard to adapt and to be flexible in employer and insurer reporting as we implement the law.”

The delay deprives the federal government of a year of penalties that would have been paid by companies that do not meet the law’s requirements, with as yet unknown budgetary effects. Republicans had warned of a downturn in hiring as a result of the mandate.

The so-called individual mandate is unaffected by the rule change. That provision requires the vast majority of Americans to purchase insurance or pay a penalty, with tax credits provided to those who can’t afford coverage.

Republican former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin called the move “deviously brilliant,” by removing a potential electoral impediment from in front of congressional Democrats before the midterms.

“Democrats no longer face the immediate specter of running against the fallout from a heavy regulatory imposition on employers across the land,” Holtz-Eakin wrote. “Explaining away the mandate was going to be a big political lift; having the White House airbrush it from the landscape is way better.”

The Administration will publish formal guidance on the rule change within the next week. 

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Moves like this should show Republicans just why the Democrats are far superior politicians than they. In fact, I believe that despite the slew of political scandals plaguing the White House, and with this, of course, mitigating these factors, they will probably regain the House and extend their majority in 2014 because somehow the Democrats will manage to shift the blame of all of these issues toward their GOP brethren in Congress. It is a "deviously brilliant" political act on their part, one for which they have for the past 80 years been most noted for undertaking even when they should, by all rights, be dead in the water.

Still, what does this mean for 2015? Well, Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, looks to become what I like to refer to as one of the ruling elites in the Federal Politburo. Already we have seen Eric Holder become more powerful recently despite the public's outcry over his profligacy and corruption that has left dozens dead in the wake of his involvement in Operation Fast and Furious, not to mention his persecuting the idiots within the media who instead of publicly ostracizing him, simply ignore the things he has done since it is so committed to the liberal cause. There are other Cabinet departments that achieved greater power than at any other point in the history of their existence, but Sebelius stands to become perhaps the most powerful of them all. Unfortunately, she is so concerned with ascertaining great power that she does not care for the economic and financial well-being of the American people. The following article from United Liberty, dated July 1, 2013, confirms this in her exact words:

Sebelius to Dems: Don’t worry about job losses caused by ObamaCare

Mon, 07/01/2013 - 2:14pm | posted by Jason Pye

Facing steady opposition against ObamaCare and a long, steady string of news reports documenting reduce hours for employees and/or job losses, many Democrats in Congress have realized that they are losing the message battle over the law.

At the end of last week, Politico noted that some House Democrats were able to stress their concerns to DHHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, whose department is responsible for ObamaCare’s implementation. Her response to those concerns was, well, rather callous (emphasis mine):

Congressional Democrats told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Wednesday that Americans are still very confused about the health care law — including older people who worry that Obamacare will change their Medicare.

Sebelius went to the Hill for another update with Democrats on Obamacare rollout. HHS this week overhauled its website, focusing more on the exchange enrollment, which starts Oct. 1.

[…]

[L]awmakers said that Sebelius’s main message was the importance of countering false notions about the law that are prevailing around the country — and doing it at a grass-roots level. She told lawmakers not to worry when they read media accounts about people losing their health coverage, said Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.).

“There are articles here and there in newspapers talking about people who lost their coverage, … but the assurance she’s been giving us is a lot of those are probably pre-anticipations, and a lot of those are going to be unfounded if they just take a deep breath,” he said.

A recent survey from Gallup showed that many employers are worried about the impact that ObamaCare will have their businesses. The poll showed that 60% of employers have either stopped hiring or eliminated jobs because of the law.

Just last week two Pennsylvania school districts — East Penn and Southern Lehigh — cut employees’ hours to avoid the employer mandate, a part of the law that requires a business to offer health insurance to any employee working at least 30 hours per week. School districts across Indiana and North Carolina are facing similar quandaries. The State of Virginia has also cut hours for non-salaried workers.

Things are just as bad in the private sector. Restaurant franchisees are scaling back hours and expansion because of the ObamaCare. Universal Orlando, a major theme park, and Regal Cinemas have take similar steps. These are just the most well known examples, but there’s an seemingly endless list of businesses that have taken dramatic steps to avoid the burdensome costs of ObamaCare.

These concerns are not “unfounded,” as Sebelius would have us believe. Employers have real concerns which have real world consequences for their employees, as the law has already started to drive up the cost of health insurance coverage. They’re hurting, but the message from the Obama Administration is dismissive. That “trust us” line may work with some in Congress. But these Democrats should ask a small business owner how they feel about ObamaCare and its effect their employees and their bottom line.

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Conclusion: A Stark Warning for the American People

The article I posted yesterday, Per Mr. Conservative: "15 Signs Jobs in America are Losing Their Value," displayed a photograph from the Great Depression era of a long soup line. This, of course, is what the Obama administration wants for America.  He wants the American people to rely upon him, to worship him, no matter the cost. 

Here is the photograph from the Great Depression, sure to happen again should we fail not to tell our employers -- our elected congressmen and senators, and our president -- to end the practice of oppressively regulating and growing the size of government in our lives, which includes taxation. Finally, we must make our voices heard to our elected leaders to end Obama Care now, not tomorrow.

I am often reminded of a story about Joseph Stalin. There are several versions of this tale, some stating that it transpired in the 1930's. One, however, took place while upon his death bed in 1953. The title of the webpage is Russia Channel.com. In a sad irony, the title of the message board thread is "Joseph Stalin was the best country leader ever."

(Above: Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, 1878-1953.)

The first story will be the one from 1935:

One day in 1935 Josef Vissariionovitch Djugashvili, known as Josef Stalin ("Man of Steel") (who in his early life studied to be a priest and robbed banks for entertainment), lined up his senior KGB and General Staff officers on the parade ground.  There was no junior officers or enlisted men in the vicinity.

The senior officers were intrigued to notice Stalin had a live chicken under his left arm. As he dictated, his policies of cutting the peoples food rations, and ordering another 2,000,000, Kulaks (middle class) to be entrained for the Siberian Gulags, he slowly but methodically with his right hand plucked the live chicken. He just pulled hand fulls of feathers out and let them fall near his feet, he ignored the chicken completely. It squawked and fluttered a lot, but Joesf did not desist from his tirade on his generals and his task of plucking the live chicken.

When Stalin had finished, dressing down the senior officers for not being severe enough on the Russian people, when the chicken was completely bald, without moving or taking his fixed gaze off the eyes of the Generals he just dropped the chicken. Immediately he reached into his large Greatcoat pocket and pulled out some seed, he let some of it filter through his fingers on to the parade ground. The bald, plucked chicken immediately ran back to his feet and next to the pile of its own feathers began pecking contentedly, eating the seeds as he dropped them.

Joe Stalin bellowed at his officers. "This is a lesson I learned many years ago when I grew up in Georgia, on the farm, with my mother's people, who are peasants on the land, the same sort of people you are dealing with. People are the same as Chickens, treat them nice and they will be revolting at every opportunity, give them an inch and they will want a mile. Treat them tough, real tough. Pull all their feathers out, take everything off them, leave them naked in the snow, and like this grazing chicken, they will love you, love you forever, they will never forsake you. Just feed them a little, every now and then, with the words. It is a necessity for sacrifices today for the sake of a better tomorrow, that's enough."

Then, there's the one from his death bed:

When Josef Stalin was on his deathbed, he called in two likely successors, to test which one of the two had a better knack for ruling the country.

He ordered two birds to be brought in and presented one bird to each of the two candidates.

The first one grabbed the bird, but was so afraid that the bird could free himself from his grip and fly away that he squeezed his hand very hard, and when he opened his palm, the bird was dead.

Seeing the disapproving look on Stalin's face and being afraid to repeat his rival's mistake, the second candidate loosened his grip so much that the bird freed himself and flew away.

Stalin looked at both of them scornfully. "Bring me a bird!" he ordered.

They did.

Stalin took the bird by its legs and slowly, one by one, he plucked all the feathers from the bird's little body.

Then he opened his palm. The bird was laying there naked, shivering, helpless.

Stalin looked at him, smiled gently and said, "You see... and he is even thankful for the human warmth coming out of my palm." 

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Regardless of which one, if either story, is correct or accurate, it seems characteristic of the man who was known as "Man of Steel" in the Soviet Union, who enjoyed such a cult of personality and leadership that despite being responsible for as many as 20 million deaths within the Soviet Union during his reign as dictator, that he would probably endeavor to make his point to his subordinates or successors in such a brutal fashion.  But it is emblematic of what America is experiencing today, only not to such an extreme... yet. With the IRS, Justice Department, EPA, NSA, FBI, CIA, and finally Homeland Security watching every move those who are opposed to President Obama make, this type of phenomena is not totally out of the question. The fact that people can no longer even so much as criticize or decry Muslims and the religion of Islam for the global atrocities for which they and the religion have responsible leads me to believe further that the government is far more elitist today than ever before in U.S. history. The fact these organizations, along now with Sebelius' rise to power within the Obama Cabinet, are going to have complete control over the people's lives is startling in and of itself. But like in Russia, where the government is installing into their public schools' curricula that Stalin's policies which resulted in the deaths of a conservative estimate 20 million Soviet citizens and the youth in that embattled nation look to him for inspiration and as a national hero, many Americans today are showing the same veneration and reverence for Obama.  

(Above: Journalist Edward R. Murrow, 1908-1965. Courtesy of Wikipedia)

To close, I will first post a famous trio by Edward R. Murrow which I hope will serve as a reminder of what our nation is facing as well speak (Courtesy of CBS News):

"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves."

He also declared that politicians blame the media for misrepresenting the government, which we have seen in with several officials within the current administration, including Obama:

"When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained."

America has returned to its ignominious pre-Reagan position as a nation of wolves. He also stated that is incumbent upon a free society that if it wishes to remain so, it must voice its displeasure at the injustices being wrought upon it by the government: 

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular."

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Finally, I will turn to art and literature, to the famous Welsh poet Dylan Thomas' poem, Do Not Go Gently Into that Good Night, written in honor of his father, who was dying and thus prompted Thomas to encourage him not to die without fighting: 

(Above: Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953. Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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Do not go gently into that good night, America.  And, as Murrow used to say, "Good night, and good luck."