Thursday, April 1, 2010

Cheering for our future

One of my more favorite bands, Dropkick Murphys, has a song that makes me want to pump my fist in the air and sing along. The name of the song is, A Few Good Men. It’s about joining to together to be heard. Although I have heard this song hundreds of times, the chorus has hit me pretty hard in recent days.

The words of the chorus are, “Join us in a song - we shall rise and sing, stand up and be counted - sing a song for liberty, join us in this song - together we shall sing rise up and be counted - sing it loud, sing it proud.”

With that in mind I want to sing it loud, if you will.

The Democrats recently passed the Health Care reform bill. Personally, I couldn’t be happier. Now I know most of you have either stopped reading right there or are saying, “The guy has lost his mind.” That’s fine, because the same was said about those who supported the New Deal.

See, during the Great Depression Franklin Delano Roosevelt was struggling with how to put America back to work. In the first 100 days of his presidency, FDR ram-rodded legislation through congress because he had majority support in the Democratic Party. Hmm, maybe

Programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps. and the Works Progress Administration gave people work when there wasn’t much to have.

FDR faced many of the same criticism that President Obama faces today. Hyper Conservatives and party rivals screamed socialist. They feared that the government was going to take over everything and their freedom was going to be jeopardized. That was more than 70 years ago. Guess what? You still have your freedom. Oh, and we aren’t socialists either.

FDR also enacted Social Security to allow the elderly to leave the workforce, enabling the younger generations of workers to find jobs. Social Security, a program we still have today. A program that, back then, faced heavy criticism. FDR was elected to office three times. Not too bad for a supposed socialist!

Fast forward to 2010. Health Care Reform. It is pretty scary for some. Is it bad? I don’t know. But what I do know is something had to happen. I know some people feel that the burden of this is being passed to our children. But guess what, they will benefit too. Maybe not right now, but they will have their time. Just like those of you preparing to retire and begin getting your social security checks.

So I would like to Sing it Loud Sing it Proud. I would like to add my voice to the millions; yes I said millions of people who are thrilled at the Health Care Reform bill.

But, don’t give up hope, those of you who didn’t want it. The bill doesn’t go into effect until 2017. There is still time for Republicans to repeal it. But, they said the same about Social Security.

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