To improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the health care system, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), Public Law 104-191, included Administrative Simplification provisions that required HHS to adopt national standards for electronic health care transactions and code sets, unique health identifiers, and security. At the same time, Congress recognized that advances in electronic technology could erode the privacy of health information. Consequently, Congress incorporated into HIPAA provisions that mandated the adoption of Federal privacy protections for individually identifiable health information.
Got that?
This is the argot of those who rule over us, and this production is direct,
concise and simple compared to the prose in the War and Peace length of the recently enacted Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obama Care.
Yet, for all
the apparent complexity of intentions, the essential activities of government
can be reduced to three. The first and
most basic activity is to tax. Taxation
for a government is equivalent to respiration for a person. Just as a person
cannot live without breathing, a government cannot exist, cannot do anything to
or for its subjects without the resources that come from taxation. The second
is to regulate, to manage the behavior of the subjects. To govern by its very nature is to exert
control, to make people do some things (e .g. take off their shoes and jackets
in airport security lines) and abstain from doing other things (e.g. buy soft
drinks that exceed a certain volume).
The third is to punish. While
most people are willing to do what they are ordered to do or not to do, not
everyone is so inclined. Those
individuals must be given certain incentives to encourage them to conform.
If the
government decides, for example, to build a road it taxes its subjects to pay
for the construction and maintenance, and it builds the road wherever it chooses,
regardless of whose private property it may cross. To ensure some level of
safety on the roads, the driving must be regulated – the government makes
traffic rules that the subjects are required to follow. If they fail to do so
the government will punish them.
What then
becomes very clear when these basic activities are duly noted and seriously contemplated
is that at its fundamental, rock bottom core, government is an organ of coercion.
No one in the government says “please”,
“thank you” or “may I?” but instead, “you owe this amount of tax…”, “report for
jury duty…”, “I sentence you to…” , “you will comply with this regulation…” None of the obligations or directives its
places on its subjects are voluntary: government forcibly takes peoples’ money
(taxes); its rules, commands and regulations are pervasive and are backed up
with the threats of fines, prison, even death.
Not only is
government at its core coercive, it is monopolistically coercive. Only its representatives may use threats and
resort to force to secure compliance with their rules, regulations and
dictates. This unique monopoly is
justified by the governing elite’s (the politicians’) benevolent
intentions. Everyone, so the rationale
goes, is always much better off doing what the coercers want them to do. A quick glance back at the last century suggests
otherwise – ask the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Cambodians. Ask two-thirds of the people on the planet.
The simple,
obvious fact is that while all governments are coercive in nature, the less
coercive ones are better than the more coercive ones. Their politicians promise
less; they have less power; they do less damage. FDR was less lethal for his subjects than
Hitler. Nixon was gentler than Mao. A second obvious fact is that the natural
tendency of government is always in the direction of more, not less coercion. Politicians
in all governments (from the worst to
the best) work ceaselessly to increase
their power, in a word, they aim to up
the level of coercion – more taxes, more laws, more regulations. In that regard, Obama is no different than
Vladimir Putin or Raul Castro. The 2,000 page Affordable
Care Act mentioned above enacted in 2010 is a
stunning massive, intrusive piece of regulation and coercion that will reach
deep into the lives of ordinary Americans for years to come. A third, perhaps less obvious fact is that the
politicians evade or exempt themselves from the rules they make for the rest of
us. Do President Obama, Janet
Napolitano, the member of Congress strip off their jackets, shoes, belts and
jewelry and submit to the gropers whenever they fly? Will all of the complexities and constraints
of Obama Care affect them? Not ever.
Now let us
speak of guns. People hate them; they
love them. There is no topic in the
United States that arouses more extreme, intense passion than the limits of gun
ownership. One reason, I would argue, is that guns, both symbolically and
practically, challenge and threaten the government’s jealous protection over its
monopoly of coercion. Guns equalize great physical inequality. An infirmed,
elderly person wielding a derringer can defend herself against a young, strong
assailant. A ninety pound woman with a
Beretta can protect herself from a 300 pound raging rapist. People with guns are in a much better position
to do what the government never, ever wants them to do on their own – resist coercion!
The gun-haters
and gun-lovers unite into two hostile, acrimonious camps, those who trust the
coercers (who believe that if the government criminalizes gun ownership and
confiscates the guns, many fewer people will be murdered), and those who are
perennially suspicious of the politicians and believe that criminalizing gun
ownership will make ordinary citizens more vulnerable to real criminals.
History and
common sense favor the gun lovers. First, one should never believe the promises
and claims of the politicians. Vice President Biden, who leads the current gun
“control” efforts is a man whose career, even by the miniature ethical standards of
Washington, is remarkable for its unrelenting, flagrant dishonesty. A confessed
plagiarist, a habitual liar, a serial fabricator and exaggerator, his contact
with the truth is almost always accidental. After
the Newtown, CT. shooting President Obama in one of his many speeches said, “We must
change!” Who exactly is the “we”? Being, as always, unassailably virtuous he no
doubt exempts himself. The "we" is a typical Obama subterfuge. What specifically
is the “change” he wants to coerce others into making? We will all be safer he wants us to believe if the gun owners,
those “bitter clingers” as he condescendingly labeled them in 2008, become former
gun owners. There is no good reason to
believe him. He has a long documented history of antagonism to gun ownership
and has never failed to politicize any event to his advantage. Massacres, like the one in Newtown, for him
are an “opportunity.” There is little evidence that establishes strong correlation
between strict gun ownership laws and gun violence. In fact, the contrary seems to be more the
case. Gun-strict New York City, Chicago
and Washington D.C. have much higher levels of gun crime than gun-easy San
Antonio and Salt Lake City.
Second,
whenever government criminalizes a commodity that is easily made and that many
people want, the commodity remains in easy supply. Criminality then expands
because buying and selling the now-prohibited commodity are criminal
enterprises. How hard was it to get
liquor after the passing of the 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Volstead Act? No one, of course, drank during Prohibition. How difficult has it been over the last forty years
to buy marijuana?
Third, since
less coercive governments are better than more coercive ones, the citizenry
should reflexively, instinctively push back on all efforts by the coercers to
increase their dependency and ultimately establish their helplessness. Anyone who believes that the government’s
reach for guns will ever stop until they are all illegal is hopelessly
naïve.
Fourth,
consider the hypocrisy. As President
Obama splashes in the Hawaiian surf, makes his many golf rounds, whenever and
wherever he goes, rest assure that hordes of security personnel bristling with guns will be
near by. He and his family will spend
the rest of their days under the tax-supported protection of layers of gun-bearing,
government employees. If he has his way those "bitter clingers" he sneers at and the ordinary folks in their houses and apartments across the land will watch the thugs kick in
their doors. They, however, unlike their leader will have to call and wait for the police who may or may not come
to help them. But Obama will be gratified
to know that they are virtuously gun-free and thus can confront their attackers
with their government-bequeathed moral superiority.
