This is Viewpoints for Sunday, August 6, 2017

Just a piece of paper?

I am sick, tired and frankly, more than a little angry, about some of the rhetoric around the health care debate in this country. Mostly, I am incredulous about those who claim that “health care is not a right.” What’s the basis for that claim? The fact that it isn’t enumerated in the Constitution? Because that is utter nonsense. Do we really think we have rights because of the Constitution? Or do we think, as the Founders did, that our rights are inalienable, granted to us by something far more powerful than a piece of paper?

In this country, we don’t have rights because we have a Constitution, we have a Constitution to remind us of our rights. The First Amendment is not what grants us the freedom to speak without fear of government reprisal. That right is inherently ours, kindled in our hearts from the day we were born.

The Constitution was a vital document, penned by brilliant men. But it’s words, just words. Why shackle ourselves to it? When did our shared humanity become less important than a document that permited slavery? When did the letter of the law become more important than its spirit.

Who’s ‘right’?

In his July 27 letter, Frank Gadbois opined, “I believe that guaranteed health care is a human right.” He’s entitled to his opinion. On the same page of The Telegraph, columnist Bill Ferguson said, “If you’ve already made up your mind about something you can always find data that seem to support your pre-decided positions.”

I don’t believe the authours of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution had health care as an issue, so where does the “right” come from? My view is that a “right” is based on one of two considerations — legal and moral. I’m willing to be educated, but I don’t see a legal basis for health care being a “right,” so we’re left with moral. Do we want to impose our moral values on others who don’t share them?

I can’t recall Abraham Lincoln’s budget containing health care dollars. When did our human aspect change? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against Medicaid, but neither am I in the camp that screams when a suggested percentage increase is lowered and it’s called a “cut.”

Maybe the courts should list and justify all “acceptable rights” that Congress can use in its budget considerations, otherwise, future rightscan lead us down the path of socialism.

Robert Buck,

Macon

The rest of the story

The recent AP article on the 1932 Veterans Bonus March did not include several interesting details. When Congress refused to grant the bonus, most of the veterans left Washington, but a few impoverished men and their families remained in shantytowns on Pennsylvania Avenue and in Anacosta Park. President Hoover ordered the U.S. Army to remove the squatters. A plan was formulated for an operation under the command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Details of the plan were relayed to Congress by his aide, Maj. Dwight Eisenhower.

Since the only staff car assigned to Army headquarters was broken down, Eisenhower rode the streetcar to Capitol Hill (an event which he later cited as a prime example of economy in government). To reinforce the infantry, a company of horse cavalry and six tanks under the command of Maj. George Patton was added to the task force. On July 28, 1932, with MacArthur, Eisenhower and Patton as active participants, the bonus camps were annihilated and the occupants removed, but not without gunfire and some casualties.

This was the only time in history that U.S. Army troops had fired on their own veterans. The public blamed Hoover for ordering the operation, thus ensuring his defeat by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the November election.

A teachable moment?

With our fast-moving news cycle President Trump’s address last week to the Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia seems like old news. Already last week it was swept aside by other events in Washington — Anthony Scaramucci’s thankfully short-lived life as communications director and the momentous votes in the Senate around health care. But when the president of the United States makes a speech it’s news, and this one did get some attention and deserves further response on our part.

Here was the president speaking to 40,000 scouts (and to all our young people). Here was an opportunity to affirm the track they’re on, to inspire, to challenge. But it was a missed opportunity and proved a disturbing event. President Trump began by commenting on the crowd and putting down the press and then said, “I said, ‘Who the hell wants to speak about politics when I’m in front of the Boy Scouts?’ Right?”

Then he rambled on in the same vein. It was inappropriate, crass, self-serving and divisive. Several days later the Boy Scouts’ chief executive issued an apology: “I want to extend my sincere apologies to those in our Scouting family who were offended by the political rhetoric that inserted into the jamboree ...”

This called for an apology, an apology to the boys who had to hear it and to all of us. The way we talk to one another is important. The tone and the level of public discourse is important. This is part of a huge issue for us — the way we communicate today, remotely and in the moment, and the mean, winner-take-all tone of so much of our discourse. All the more reason that the way the president of our country tweets and speaks is important.

When I googled his Boy Scout address, I was glad to find an article originally posted on July 28 in the Washington Post, “Professor writes to Boy Scouts: How to think critically about Trump’s speech to the jamboree.” Mica Pollock, a professor of education studies and author of Schooltalk: Rethinking What We Say About — And To — Students Every Day, proposes four questions to consider in evaluating the president’s address and public speech in general:

1. Did his words divide?

2. Did his words mock and insult?

3. Did his words inflame?

4. Did his words mislead?

It matters. Words matter. What we say and the way we say them matters. As does what we choose to listen to and how we think about it. For the sake of the country, for the sake of our children and the kind of people they are becoming, apologies are in order. And this should become a teachable moment.

This story was originally published August 5, 2017 at 9:00 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Sunday, August 6, 2017."