WE ARE THE PATRIOTS

by Paul Gibbs


Over the course of the Medicaid expansion/Healthy Utah debate, I've heard a lot of talk of patriotism and "government tyranny". Whether it's Mike Kennedy calling the government a schoolyard bully, or Jacob Anderegg going off an embarrassing speech about the Boston Tea Party which included every right-wing slogan but "America, love it or leave it", expansion opponents never tire of flaunting their supposed patriotism and their similarity to the founding fathers, who apparently stood and said "No'" when King George tried to offer the colonists health care in return for the taxes they were already paying.  But their premise, like every other part of their ideological opposition to Medicaid expansion, is inherently, fatally flawed.


"Government tyranny" does not consist solely of levying taxes. And it does not exist solely on the federal level.  Is it tyranny for the federal government to allow the states to take back their own tax money to care for their own people? To pay 100% of that for the first three years, then 90% thereafter? Or is it tyranny for the Utah legislature to ignore the voices of the majority of its own citizens and refuse to let our tax dollars be used to help us? I see a legislature that is ignore the needs of the people who elected them, shrugging off the heart-breaking stories of those who are suffering and stopping short of saying "Let them eat cake" only because they'd want to be darn sure the cake wasn't paid for with federal tax money.


They want to ignore that those of us fighting for Medicaid expansion are not the government, not the "elite", and not even the dreaded "media". We're just citizens using our constitutional right to free speech to say this is wrong. We are the people of Utah. The people our government is supposed to be of, by and for, only in this case it's the people themselves who are in danger of perishing from the Earth. Despite the "evidence" of a ludicrous leading poll from the Sutherland Institute (a division of HYDRA), the credible evidence tells us that the people of Utah want the governor's plan. They want a voice in where their taxes go. They want to care for their fellow human beings. But their state government won't allow it because they don't like it, just like when George Washington . . . Uh, no, actually, that's the exact opposite of everything George Washington ever did. My bad.


In the case of Healthy Utah, "government tyranny" is real. It's alive and well, and there is a bully picking on those who appear weaker. But the bully is our state legislature, not the federal government. And we're not weak. We can and will continue to patriotically fight with the weapons the constitution gives us: free speech, and the right to vote. And if anything can be compared to the Boston Tea Party, it's events like the vigil we're holding on October 18 at the capitol, where Utahns can gather and say that we will not be bullied by our own state government. They work for us, not the other way around.