Wishing you all a Happy Fourth of
July from Memphis on the big muddy Mississippi River, the city where music
plays day and night and barbeque flows like waves on the ocean.
Fireworks started on Sunday here at a big Baptist Church
campus nearby. Families gathered for
picnics on the lawn, and shared their bread and the Word of God. Last night a suburb shot off its
fireworks. Families gathered around the
performing arts center and at homes eating hot dogs, and it's "pass the mustard,
please, and have some more of this here sweet tea."
Then dragging lawn chairs outside, they sat in front yards,
in driveways, and even in the street watching as the fireworks burst forth in
the sky, reminiscing over Fourth’s gone by and as the little ones saw their
first, wondered if this one would be their last.
I enjoy the patriotic music wafting through
the broken window. I hear Cohen, Sousa,
Berlin, Howe, and wonder if I’m related to Samuel Francis Smith or Francis Scott Key. I
am reminded of all the sacrifices made by those before us and around us to bring freedom to
this country and keep it. Today I think of the great
debate about Health Care in America. When our country started out so long ago,
there weren’t many people here, compared to today. Science had not advanced so far in its
healing measures. Though our forefathers wrote words of unity, people were more self- reliant.
They grew their own food, made their own clothes. Think about it. Today most of us are more dependent on others
for everything, electricity, water, food.
Our jobs (if we have one at all) are more specialized. Our country was established by struggling
immigrants to this new land. We were
poor in riches, but rich in spirit. Today,
we have a very wealthy nation, despite all the troubles we face.
Our government has the means to deliver health care to
everyone. And what greater service can
a government provide to its people, than providing for the Health of its people? Insurance
for all, is NOT the same thing as health care for all. If a man cannot afford health insurance now, making a law requiring that man to buy it, does not make it possible. Such a law is a guarantee that insurance
companies are profitable and an assurance that the Health Care PACs, lobbies,
are alive and well in DC. On the web recently, one thoughtful person
wrote, “the entire health care debate could be resolved by taking out two words
from the Medicare Act.” Those two words
were “over sixty-five.”
Is that correct? I don’t know.
But when I think about the
purpose of government, I see it as working to achieve greater good for the people it governs. Sometimes that comes in the form of checking
on the quality of the food we buy, or building highways and dams to produce
electricity. But the sine qua non of a strong, free country, with the exception
of its spiritual focus, is the health and education of its people. And from these its wealth derives. Perhaps
America can afford a Healthcare now
for its people which it couldn’t when it began its great experiment in 1776 “of
the people, FOR the people.”
