Remember how upset Liberals (and even some Conservatives) were at “The Patriot Act?” It was an “invasion of our privacy and personal freedoms,” they’d say. Despite the fact that the bill was designed to gather information on terrorists and protect the American people (not harm them), I always understood the apprehension it caused people. It’s a slippery slope, and I get that.

On the flip side, however, we’ve got an administration that is NOT seeking out dangerous people with violent records, but proactively targeting American citizens in an attempt to intimidate voices of dissent.

Make no mistake about what’s going on here. This administration couldn’t care less about “fishy material” being circulated but by using such a term, they are deliberately attempting to marginalize any opposition to a government-healthcare takeover. By describing emails and blogs as “misinformation” they try and paint any opposition with the “crazy-right wing propagandist” brush, when the fact is that the majority of the American populace oppose the current bill. Just how many, you ask?

…Well, more people than ever voted for Barack Hussein Obama, that’s for sure.

This administration is trying to target the center-right American people in order to make us feel secluded. Once they make us feel as though we’re all alone, they can start sniping people off, one by one.

If this healthcare bill gets snuffed (as it most likely will), you can expect “The Fairness Doctrine” to rear it’s ugly little head again. This administration is covering their bases so that they have some “villains” to point to. Obama will try to go “Mel Gibson in “The Patriot”” on us and pick off the commanding officers first, in hopes that the rest of us will be easy-pickings afterward.

The grass-roots movement is working, and liberals hate that!

In order to show them just how effective it has been, I will be taking submissions for a “Flag Yourself Campaign” video that will be released on Thursday. If you have a camcorder or webcam and a penchant for truth, it’s time for you to join up. I will be sending my own letter of discontent to flag@whitehouse.gov and suggest that you do the same.

If you would like to take part in the video, send an @ reply to twitter.com/scrowder

It’s time to step up to the plate and win one for the gipper.

…Or at least just stick it to Sean Penn.

For those of you who haven’t seen the recent healthcare video, let me re-cap the one running theme throughout the piece: Canadians are MISERABLE with their healthcare. Very few Americans are aware of this and that’s because of one simple reason.

See Canadians (again we’re talking about the liberal variety here)… Like to lie. Shhh, don’t tell anybody. It’s a secret.

It’s true folks. You’ve got a jealous nation with an often-misplaced inferiority complex combined with a Canadian news media (largely owned by the government) pushing the virtues of Canadian healthcare on a regular basis. So what happens is that “nationalized healthcare” becomes the one point of pride that Canadians can lord over their American counterparts.

If you tell Canadians that you want to interview them for a critical piece on the Canadian healthcare system, they’ll put on their best trophy-wife smile for the camera and list it’s many accolades.

Catch them on a day with their guard down in need of actual care however, and the truth comes out. They run through the same old exasperated, frustrated complaints pointing out the terrible flaws in the system that they all know to be true. They know that it’s long, the quality of care is sub-par and that if they’re going in for an operation that they’re probably coming out with one less appendage than needed to be removed.

Even the employees of the system itself acknowledge it’s glaring flaws. If you ask them why things are moving along at such a painfully slow pace they’ll tell you to “ask the government” followed by the old “take a number” routine.

I’ve come under a lot of attack for this video and I’m fine with it. The problem that both Liberal Canadians and Americans alike have with the video is that it’s incredibly disarming. The truth tends to have that effect on people.

It would be easy to discredit me as a right-wing propagandist if the video consisted of nothing but me with spreadsheets and statistics, but when you have Canadians on camera expressing their true misery… That puts the kibosh on the whole “bias” card pretty quickly.

What about you, folks? What’s your general perception of the Canadian healthcare system? Do your Canadian friends present it in a positive light, or a more critical one?

I personally think that we should send Sean Penn over there to test it out. The rule: he can’t come back into the country until he gets a “free” blood-test.

Farewell and adieu…

In May of 2004 the New York Times published an article entitled “Health Care Leads Other Issues in Canadian Vote.” The substance of the article was that in the elections that were upcoming, the future of the Canadian health care system was the predominate issue. On the one side were liberals seeking to reverse the trend of privatizing diagnostic services and increase federal aid to provincial governments. On the other conservatives were trying to increase private sector involvement as a way to lower costs and increase service. In spite of the Canadians patriotic zeal for their system, the article makes it clear that there was a growing recognition among citizens and politicians that the system was in the words of the Times, “ailing.” The waiting times for care were growing longer not shorter, the availability of doctors and nurses was becoming sparse especially in rural areas, opinion polls during the previous decade indicated a rising dissatisfaction with medical services and most significantly the cost of delivering medical care had grown so expensive that many provinces were being forced to “trim their budgets for education and other vital services.” Mind you this information came not from the Heritage Foundation but the New Liberal paper of record: The New York Times.

I must remember to share this article with my friend Bryan. Bryan is a cancer survivor. I have had friends that have lost their battles with cancer so his continued presence on this earth is a great joy to me and a fact of which I am sure he is also no doubt ecstatic. Bryan is particularly interested in the current state of health care costs because his insurance paid for what he terms a “measly portion” of his treatment- he is currently burdened with the cost of what his insurance did not cover. He simply can’t afford the astronomical cost. His complaint is echoed by many clamoring for nationalized healthcare. What remains unclear is under what moral principle one man can demand that others pay for his healthcare and whether any policy not firmly grounded in a moral truth can be just.

Bryan’s story perfectly illustrates the truth that the rising cost of healthcare has coincided with the rising quality of healthcare. It is true that not too long ago he would have paid considerably less for his cancer treatment. The bad news is that he would not have been around long enough to spend his savings. New drugs and new technologies lengthened his life as it they have for hundreds of thousands of others. Progress comes with a price tag.

Bryan was not denied care. In fact no one in America is denied healthcare. He had insurance and he has an income with which to pay what the insurance didn’t cover. The fact is– he would much rather spend his money on something else other than hospital bills reaching into the thousands of dollars. What better solution than a system where cancer treatment is paid for by someone else? He may be interested to learn that the U.S. ranks first in the world in cancer survivor rates and that breast cancer survivors in Canada have filed a class action suit against several hospitals that forced them to wait 12 weeks for radiation therapy. Obviously neither Bryan nor other national healthcare advocates want to wait in lines or have others decide if they are to live or die. What they want is someone else to foot the bill even if children receiving a public education must suffer.

This brings me to a conversation I had about healthcare a few years ago on the corner of 8th avenue and 47th street in Manhattan. I was standing on the corner debating politics with my friend Nancy, or I should say my ex-friend Nancy. This conversation was one of the last I had with her and remains positive proof that good friends ought to avoid discussing politics. But I digress.

At one point Nancy decried the fact that poor people did not have access to the same care as those of better means. I responded rather incredulously that the wealthy would always have access to better care because they would always be able to pay for it. Nancy’s eyes grew narrow and she asked me, “Do you think that is fair?”

It was at that moment that I truly understood that for all the handwringing about rising costs and access for the 47 million uninsured what is really at issue is equality. Will America be a place where some have more and others have less? Because we can’t all be equal in our benefits will we struggle to “level the playing field” in order to ensure that we are all equal in our misery?

But even in Canada some folks are more equal than others. What we learn in the Times account is that the use of influence in order to jump waiting times is common and that those preaching the virtue of a nationalized system are frequently at pains to explain why they and their loved ones attend private clinics.

The Times article ends with the conservative Member of Parliament giving an emotional speech wherein he promises to expand federal drug benefits. Of course he neglects to explain where he will get the money to “pay for a program that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year.”

Politics in any language.