In these pages we have recently been treated to a series of letters to the editor blasting the newly-passed Health Care Reform bill. There is something common to all these letters – they are from people who have perverse notions of why it is we live together in a society, what our individual obligations to society are, what society’s obligations to us are, and what values we as a society choose to define ourselves. The current debate over health care is once again an argument over a Social Contract.
John Clifford (“Health care law is about power and control”), who represents himself as an “independent,” is nevertheless a determined mouthpiece for the Heritage Foundation and the Republican Party. Clifford whines that mandating that all American citizens buy private medical insurance is somehow a step in the direction of socialized medicine and presents a list of talking points torn from the inventive pages of gop.gov. Rodney Fernandes (“Dawn of the entitlement age”) portrays those who receive public assistance as zoo animals, ignoring the corporate welfare “entitlements” and bailouts we have treated American business to for decades. Randall Faria (“Ignoring true cost of health law”) takes a less severe approach, applauding new provisions preventing insurance companies from excluding those with preexisting conditions – but his main objection is that it’s not good for business. He writes, “it will not be long before my employers realize it will be cheaper to pay the fine than continue my coverage.” Apparently his employer hasn’t realized all this time that it would be cheaper to simply not offer insurance at all. Nelson Strebor (“Health care is not a right”) believes in Social Darwinism and Tea Parties.
Then there is Ron Wisner (“Democrat’s massive money pit”), who presumably dashes off some of his posts to libertarianletter.com while taking his yacht on the Marion-Bermuda race. Mr. Wisner, who fulminates against illegal immigrants, in support of the Iraq war, and who blames the financial crisis on government not letting market forces prevail, actually addresses the Social Contract in one of his blog posts. Wisner rejects the Social Contract, writing that “the individual has been enjoined to give up some of those fruits to less productive citizens, not because of any agreement, nor because of any hope of gain, proportional or otherwise to his loss, but as mandatory largess and to a notion of sanctimonious altruism. There now ceases to be a quid pro quo.” He also writes: “If the individual chooses to do otherwise, he may leave the company of men and his survival is thus solely an issue for himself and his industriousness and innate abilities.” Mr. Wisner’s notions remind me of those of the 19th century anarcho-capitalist, Lysander Spooner, who ended up pronouncing the U.S. Constitution null and void.
Yes, there is a certain element of “quid-pro-quo” in a Social Contract. We support society; it supports us. But the Social Contract also involves agreement on what kind of society we want to live in. It also involves the prioritization of social goals – not always based on simple dollars. And it defines what kind of values we choose as a society. A society that cares more about education and health care of its citizens is a totally different one from a society that wages billion-dollar-a-day wars. A society that funds its libraries distinguishes itself from one that provides funding for junkets to China for corporations thinking about relocating their operations. A society that raises its taxes a fraction of a percent is different from one which hands out tax breaks. A society that cares about health care for the children of others is different from one prepared to let the uninsured fend for themselves.
Most of these views, particularly Wisner’s, remind us of Thomas Hobbes’ famous thoughts on the Social Contract. Hobbes wrote that, without a Social Contract, life would be “nasty, brutish, and short.” Instead, we would live like animals in a state of nature, where we would enjoy the “right to all things” but there would be “war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes).
If you haven’t figured it out yet, that’s the Tea Party vision for America.
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