Article Contributed on: 8/29/2009 8:27:18 AM
If you don't know already, I am very passionate about affordable health care for America. After reading what Jon Voight had to say on the subject, I responded to him with the following: After reading Jon Voight's comments on health care reform, it occurred to me that if Mr. Voight can accuse Mr. Obama of inciting Civil War, the same might be said of Mr. Voight in respect to a new American Revolution. Now, before you jump on the bandwagon and start thinking that is a good thing the country might need, keep in mind that the Founding Fathers who took up arms against their country were also wealthy, landed slave-owners and the minority in their country. Many Americans at the time were yeoman farmers who took care of themselves, did not have enough money to even worry about taxation by the British and were already more free than any of us is today. In Revolutionary manner, Voight and his Republican allies incite the masses with talk of taxation, talk of the Alinsky method, and raise the question of "unalienable rights", almost exactly as wealthy colonists did as early as 1770. In the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionaries listed 27 arguments against the King, one of which was taxation. Yet, Colonists already received a better tax rate than citizens in the homeland, and the real argument was not that they were being taxed so much as the fact that the taxes would actually be collected. Do you think the yeoman farmer cared about the tax on rum? He drank whiskey made from his leftover crops and did not even have money for rum. As for Saul Alinsky, how many people reading this article even know what the Alinsky method is? How many would react negatively to anything labeled "radical", even without the support of evidence? I might well point the finger at Voight himself and point out his own adherence to Alinsky techniques. Read the book. Finally, Mr. Voight's claim that, "We are witnessing a slow, steady takeover of our true freedoms", sounds like the Declaration of Independence claim of "certain unalienable" rights. It sounds profound until you realize that the words come from wealthy men looking out more for their own interests than anything else, and, in the case of the Founding Fathers, it was complete irony since many of them owned slaves! How can one speak of freedom and, at the same time, own slaves? In the same respect, how can a wealthy Jon Voight possibly relate to yeoman workers in today's society and know about their freedoms when he does not have to get up every day, work hard for the few dollars he can earn as a slave to the system, and wonder how he is going to afford health insurance at the end of the month. Jon Voight knows no more about the life of the average American than Andrew Carnegie knew about the steel workers who toiled for him at the rate of $9 a week, 52 weeks a year until they died. Yes, Mr. Voight, I am outraged, but not by Obama. I am outraged that any American would spend all the Nation's money on war to kill women, children and babies, but could not find a lone cent to help grandma pursue the blessings of liberty with decent, affordable health care. I am outraged that people like Jon Voight, who will never have to decide between buying their medications or buying their groceries, feel it is their civic duty to convince the huddled masses to deprive themselves of their unalienable rights because it might mean a few coins out of already bulging pockets. Yes, Mr. Voight, I am outraged by you and your rich cronies throwing bread crumbs at America, and, when the opportunity comes to actually feed any of them, you respond from history with, "Let them eat cake".