The Unconstrained Beast

"The bigger the government, the less significant the citizen." That is how columnist Dennis Prager sums up the ramifications of the passage of Obamacare. Enough has been said about all the terrible things in the bill. It's obvious that premiums will go up, hospitals will be understaffed, and federal debt will explode to unsustainable levels. But the greater question is what does the passage of Obamacare say about the current social situation of the United States?
It's clear that the left has boldly come out and said, "Damn with the public opinion! We have a shot at getting our agenda through and we will do just that." This is the downside of a republic. We are not a democracy where the majority always rules. That is not to say that public opinion should not be addressed and respected however. But it does highlight the system that we live in.
More importantly though it does show a shift in the dominate vision of America. I'm currently reading Thomas Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions." He contends that there are two dominate visions that are competing against one another in society: the constrained vision and the unconstrained vision. The constrained vision (the more conservative one) sees the individual as the make up of society and that the errors that make up human nature will always be a part of society. Thus the constrained vision always deals with trade-offs not solutions. The unconstrained vision sees man as being able to progress to higher ideals. Thus society is like a an equation that needs to be tinkered with until the optimal answer is reached.
The left has ushered the unconstrained vision into popular thinking in the United States. We speak of "ending poverty in America," "stopping global warming," and "ending income inequality." This is perfect unconstrained vocabulary. The individual is not the problem---it's the situation that man is in. The constrained vision sees this rightly as pure folly. There will always be environmental issues, there will always be income inequality, and there will always be poverty. The constrained vision seeks not to "cure" such ailments of society, but instead focuses on making them easier to deal with. Thus the constrained vision speaks of "growing wealth" instead of "ending poverty."
Obamacare is the unconstrained vision put into reality. It targets the wealthy to give to the poor. It views the health care problem as an equation and Obamacare as the missing "x" to make everything work.
The good news? The unconstrained vocabulary sounds moral and appealing, but doesn't pan out in reality. President Johnson vowed to end poverty by declaring war on it---and yet we speak of the same issues to this very day. President Wilson fought the war to end all wars---and yet the planet is always dealing with violence.
The unconstrained vision may be experiencing a rise in popularity at the moment---but as always it won't last long. The American people will come to realize that our problems will always be with us---the real question is how do we deal with them? We deal with them by recognizing there must always be trade-offs and that the more power we give the government the less significant our role as individuals become. It's as the great libertarian novelist Ayn Rand once remarked, "Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it -- that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life."