Health care will cost Americans their liberty.

A letter to the editor from the August 11th Key West Citizen. Yes, the same respected newspaper that stated today that the leading cause of death is Hearth Disease.

We now present a Reenactment. A curmudgeonly fantasia on national themes:

Please silence your cellphones.

"Choose wisely now, for our choices will be scrutinized by not just the entire world: this period in the history of our nation will be lectured upon to our children’s children, and then their grandchildren.

Those nations that have fashioned their own after ours, to lift up their people, to allow the spirit of liberty to flow among them, they are wondering: Will that beacon they’ve followed be quenched? Can no nation allow its people their God-given rights if not America? Must the rights of all people come only from the state?

Our own children will dress their children for school and wonder: Did the country make the right choice then, when faced with financial distress and war: did they take the easy way out?

They set the thought aside, as they always do, and press on to their jobs for the state: but it lingers, was it worth it, these choices?...

Home again, and with the children’s homework they wonder anew why the history book doesn’t tell the same stories as Grandfather did. They allow for a moment their grandfather’s tales were so that they could – but they put it aside once again.

As they tuck their children into bed, they know the dreams will return. The forefathers will whisper those same words again, and again, eyes afire, impressing them to leap from their beds and take it back, take it back! Those words again and again: “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

They wonder before succumbing to the darkness, was their health care worth all that was given up?

May the spirit guide you in your choice.

David Carter
Key West

Guide you in your choice, indeed, David. Are these letters to the editor the result of Sarah Palin’s speechwriters being out of work? And such. And soforth. For they too, have the God-given right to put food on the table to feed the illegitimate children of their illegitimate children's children.

So, Dave. “This period in the history of our nation will be lectured upon?” OH, absolutely. But I’ll bet the lectures will be about the dangers of unchecked authority, the cowardliness of not pursuing justice for those who have so damaged the respect of political authority. Of a time when rights could be withheld from a segment of the population and not be called discrimination. Of a moment in time that produced more corrupt billionaires willing to steal from those foolish enough to still trust in the fairness of mankind. Of a time when America's leaders did indeed sacrifice liberty for security and achieved neither. Sign me up for that lecture, Dave.

“Will the beacon that other nations have followed be quenched?” Those nations must have cotton-mouth by now, if they are still sucking at the dry teat of the current America. In answer to your mixed metaphor, Dave, yes, that thirst can be darkened.

Are the forefathers visiting you in your sleep again, Dave? With eyes afire? I remember, this one time, after eating spicy food before going to bed, I had a wild dream of a hot-hot three-way with Alexander Hamilton and George Washington. Or maybe it was Hamilton and Barbara Bush. They’ve always looked so much alike. No, now I remember. There were eyes afire. THAT was definitely Babs. Sidebar: Babs won't respect your safeword.

Yes, Dave, invoke the children. The 5 ½ million uninsured children. It is surely they who will suffer most from health care. And our kids will be dressing our grandchildren for school, where they will go to study in their history books? My history education didn't really begin until about the fourth grade. I'd been dressing myself for over a year by then. Will all of our grandchildren be afflicted with Downs syndrome? Limbless? A deathly allergic reaction to buttons? Won't they be happy that they got the good health care?

So, Dave, health care will cost our liberty? Remember forefather Patrick Henry said “Give me liberty OR give me death” not “Give me liberty and a pre-existing condition that will ultimately lead to my death”.

Have you no hearth Dave? Have you no hearth?