Many people in American politics who lean to the left have a strange belief. They believe that Republicans do something wrong when we refuse to help Obamacare work.
Let me explain something:
The individual mandate harms my friends and neighbors. The individual mandate harms me. The individual mandate harms my country.
When confronted with something that harms people you care about, the loving, kind choice is to try to prevent that harm. The loving, kind choice is never to assist in harm.
Here’s an offer to people on the left: If you will join me in saving the people and the country I love from the evil of the individual mandate, I will join you in trying to make this law work.
But of course, when confronted with offers like that in the past, Obamacare supporters have said, the individual mandate is indispensable. The law can’t work without it.
Very well.
No change to the individual mandate, no help from Republicans.
I want all my fellow Americans to have health coverage if they want it. I want all my fellow Americans to have financial security in the event of illness.
But I do not want it so bad that I will destroy the freedom of people I love just to get it.
End the mandate, and Republican “obstructionism” will change.
Keep the mandate, and you are participating in an evil enterprise which must be ended by whatever nonviolent means are at hand.