when rights seem so wrong

In teeny tiny steps, after a long trek in coming, the first round of the Health Care Reform battle has been accomplished. The good bad and ugly have been exaggerated, obliterated, fabricated and imaginate –ed. Dire predictions of socialism have been announced. Cartoonish figures of the President as Hitler, as Stalin, as Mao and the Red Brigade have been strewn on hundreds of posters, and warnings that anyone who even whispered Nancy Pelosi’s name in the past year are now on a list of Un-American activity subversives similar to the glory days of McCarthyism.

The party of “no”, all 41 Republican Senators and 178 Republican Congress People decided that personal politics was greater than the good of the citizens. With no bipartisanship, or real debate, they tried to stall the “bill”, and in the end refused to participate by voting nay. It seemed their corporate donors and their landfill of lobbyists, ranked higher than the health and welfare of their constituents.

But somehow in the same breath that many Republican leaders used to screech and scream about the demise of personal freedoms in health care they also protested in louder voices about not repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (LGBT’s should not have personal rights to serve in the military), abortion (women should have no right to their bodies), same sex marriage (no rights for the freedom to marry to just anyone).

Somehow in the convoluted “please the lowest common denominator of bigots” rational, it is okay to complain about loss of some rights for those you deem unworthy but its even mightier to champion the lack of rights for causes you are told to believe in. It is fine to complain about government control as being too fascist or socialistic, but if the government relies on religious dogma to become dictatorial its fine and dandy.

We are now peeling apart the Republican responses from at least 13 states Attorneys General who are willing to sue the Federal Government because each particular state would rather have their citizens go without health care. They want to permit people to opt out of buying into a health insurance policy and at the same time a majority of the same states have set restrictions on abortion, and who can or can not get married. It seems the Attorneys General are okay in denying freedom, rights, choice in some areas, and find no moment of pause in encouraging it in others. On what grounds…? On what principle…?

We hear the hue and cry “the right to life”, but once the life is created it just does not matter if they can see a doctor, avoid pre-existing health conditions, or choose between shelter or health, food or health. We hear the cry “it’s for family values”, when the protesters decry the love between same sex partners, but if the family can not afford the cost of medical bills what happens to their value then?

Now it seems it is the time to get even with those "damn democrats". It's time to punish those who think about the poor, the unemployed, the minority, the middle class American who strive for more. Its time to play politics so the same old stodgy corporations, CEO's, lobbyists, lemming like self loathing, blame others for their being a victim can add one more notch to their belt of denying, and defying.

So instead of moving the country along with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the party of "no", is just counting the days until the elections of 2012, hoping those who hate, those who are afraid, those who want their wounds of bigotry and bias to just fester, will once again change the face of America and go backwards into the world.

Teeny tiny steps by elected officials who dared step beyond the pale, only t be challenged by bullies who never speak the truth, never do as they say, and only want to keep the downtrodden down.

The cry for rights by the Republicans just seems so wrong.