A point of clarification on what it means to be a "conservative"

The Fiscally Conservative argument for the role of government faces one major problem that is, unfortunately, easily exploited by the opposition. That problem is, Conservatism does not believe in big government solutions to social problems. That is, our instinct is to fight to prevent big government encroachment into the lives of everyday Americans... things like Socialized Health Care, for instance.

Democrats (Liberals, if you prefer) like to use that against us. They say that because Conservatives don't like the idea of a mandatory national health care system, that this must mean that we don't want a certain portion of the public to have any health care at all... which of course is not true.

I don't know a single Conservative who doesn't want to find at least some kind of solution to the problem of Americans who can't afford health care. If it has to be a government solution, well then so be it. But the point is, looking to Government for solutions to problems is, for any Conservative worth his salt, an instinctual last resort.

What Conservatives object to most strenuously, is the idea that Government should do for people what they can otherwise do for themselves. We believe that a country is most free, and its Democracy most robust, when the absolute minimum number of its citizens are dependent upon government for the necessities of their daily lives.

So what does that mean in practice? Well let's stick with health care for a minute. I have a good job with a good benefits package. Through that package I pay for a certain level of medical coverage. I'm happy with the coverage and its cost to me. But if I weren't I could opt out and go sign up for any of a million private HMO plans from Cigna to Blue Cross to Kaiser. Or I could go with no health care at all if I choose.

Under these conditions I have maximized my liberty by having the largest number number of health care choices available to me. That's good for me, sure, but it's also good for you as a taxpayer. Government is already stretched to the limit, and taxes are about as high as they can realistically get. Doesn't it make sense that we should be finding ways to REDUCE the number of people who are drawing some kind of benefit from government's coffers? If government does not have to look after my health care requirements, then that means government needs to take less of your money, which leaves you more free to pursue the choices that matter to YOU as an individual. If you have less money in your pocket because government is taking more of it, then you are less free.

That's a fact, any way you wanna look at it.

Barack Obama (and a lot of his colleagues) want to force me out of my high-choice health care environment and slam me into a single providor, mandatory government solution. I'm happy with the coverage I have. I pay for it with privately owned capital (owned by me) and I receive service from a private firm that neither asks for nor receives tax money with which to provide it. It simply makes no sense to eliminate that arrangement for the purposes of adding me to an already swollen roll of people who receive other people's money to pay for things they are happy and able to pay for themselves.

You're going to see a recurring theme on this blog if you stick with it long enough. You're going to see us come back to freedom, liberty, and the individual again and again. We're going to come after Democrats a lot because as we watch the speeches and the election year posturing, it's becoming clear that too many Democrats want us to be wards of the state... born in government hospitals, educated in government schools, working jobs that are covered by government-monitored unions, going to government doctors, which we'll drive to while listening to government approved content on the radio, finally at long last, to live out our retirment on some kind of a mandatory government pension system while staring zombie-like at TV programming that used to be interesting before some bureaucrat decided that what we were watching wasn't politically "fair" and needed some kind of government intervention.

I'm sorry but that's simply not freedom.. When it looks like it, and smells like it, and acts like it, you call it what it is... slavery.