America’s greatness flows from freedom
MY VIEW
Washington D.C. is an amazing place to visit. History is preserved within the walls of museums all across the district. But beyond the history that is kept there, so much of our country’s important historic events actually happened here and history is still being made every day.
I visited the capital of Ethiopia for 20 days in 2011 to complete the adoption of our son. Our family loves Addis Ababa and its people. But there is no comparison to the greatness of America.
The difference is freedom.
A few things really stood out when we were in Addis Ababa.
In Ethiopia, you can’t take photos of the presidential palace or other government buildings. When a dignitary arrives in the country, it isn’t unheard of for main thoroughfares to be shut down and heavily armed officers posted every few yards to maintain security.
In America’s capital, crazy priests are allowed to protest in the middle of the street at rush hour and continuous protests are even allowed at the president’s home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I took a photo Sunday night of the White House with a machine gun-toting capitol police officer smiling at me while I took it.
One of the most interesting things about the steady stream of protesters is that most of them are from other countries. Of course when the president or Congress does something controversial, plenty of Americans use their First Amendment right to assemble and speak freely. But on a typical day, the majority of the protesters are from outside the country. In America, they enjoy freedoms they still dream of in many other countries.
There is a tent just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House where a protest against nuclear weapons and in favor of peace has been in process for decades. Someone fills the tent and continues the protest 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. One woman spent more than three decades of her life taking part in the protest before her death in 2016. But the protest continues, even in her absence.
It hasn’t been completely continuous, however. In 2013, a man who was supposed to work his shift walked away from the tent for unknown reasons. White House security dismantled and removed the group’s tent. But it wasn’t long before they were back and set up to resume the briefly paused protest.
A few blocks up the street from the White House is an entire museum dedicated to news — appropriately known as the Newseum.
It celebrates the First Amendment and great work in journalism over the years. When you see the work done in America and other countries by journalists who have exposed injustice and influenced world events, it makes you wonder why our current administration considers the media the “enemy of the people.”
Our nation’s capitol is one big monument to freedom. From the men and women who authored founding documents that granted those freedoms, to those who fought and died to preserve the freedoms, and those who exercise their freedoms every day, Washington D.C. honors them all.
Kent Bush is publisher of Shawnee (Oklahoma) News-Star and can be reached at kent.bush@news-star.com
WASHINGTON — There’s considerable irony in the sudden and desperate quest of Republicans in Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare, in light of the party’s longstanding dread and disdain of government involvement in any sort of national health care.
For decades, the GOP war cry of “socialized medicine” was a unifying theme and the backbone of conservative resistance to all aspects of Democratic liberalism. Republicans conjured all sorts of bugaboos, such as hostile Washington bureaucrats making medical decisions that should be left to doctors, to sway opinion against it.
The notion reigned among Republicans that a person’s health care was a private concern between an individual and his or her personal physician, with Uncle Sam staying out of the way, whether in terms of treatment or manner of payment for it.
From the earliest days of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal concept of public responsibility for the general welfare of all Americans regardless of income and social status, the Republican Party pushed back hard, preaching individual responsibility and, in its harshest terms, every man for himself.
The Great Depression had ushered in a public imperative for community responses to unemployment, poverty and associated social ills. Government cures such as welfare relief and social security benefits for the elderly gained broad acceptance in liberal thought and policy. But many conservatives dominating the Republican Party clung to their opposition to what they saw as unnecessary and excessive government intrusion into the lives of Americans.
“Socialized medicine” endured through the 1930s and beyond as a prime GOP banner in the political and philosophical wars between the two major parties. Succeeding Democratic administrations fought a long, uphill struggle in the field of national health care. They most notably failed during the Bill Clinton administration when the president turned the challenge over to his wife, Hillary, who wasn’t able to produce a bill that could be enacted.
Throughout this time, the private health insurance industry, solidly supported in the Republican Party, fiercely and effectively defended its role in providing coverage against liberal efforts to enlarge government’s role in facilitating and financing broader public health coverage. Not until 2010 did Democratic President Barack Obama finally win congressional approval of an historic Affordable Care Act, soon contemptuously dubbed Obamacare by its partisan critics.
The Republican Party quickly set its sights on eradicating it. Although the Democratic plan ran into heavy trouble during implementation stage, millions of Americans did sign up. But major growing pains in the plan, and rapidly rising costs to enrollees, soon spurred fueled a GOP crusade to “repeal Obamacare.”
But many of the millions of enrollees eventually began to have second thoughts about losing their new health care, as problem-laden as it was. As a result, the Republican war cry was broadened to “repeal and replace Obamacare.” Soon it became clear that many GOP enrollees didn’t want the baby thrown out with the bath water.
Donald Trump made repealing Obamacare a prime campaign promise. After he took office, House Republicans in two tries slapped together a bill, and the Senate Republicans have now vowed to pass their own version. Yet Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell finds himself hard-pressed to find enough Republicans to pass it, as protesting recipients of Obamacare packed the hall outside his office Thursday and were hauled or wheeled away by U.S. Capitol police.
In a bizarre turnaround, the party historically against “socialized medicine” is struggling to enact a version of it, fearful of losing the support of millions of covered enrollees who desperately want some manner of government-run and government-financed health care.
Jules Witcover can be reached at juleswitcover@comcast.net