It is truly amazing that the future of health care in the U.S. will be determined by the opinion of the Supreme Court concerning the meaning of our 236 year old Constitution.
Surely, the Founding Fathers who argued over Article One, Section Eight, which includes the Commerce Clause, could not have foreseen that their concern with regulating trade between the colonial states, the Indians and foreign powers, would one day be used to deprive a sigificant minority of Amerians of health care.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the United States is unique among nations in being governed by an ancient document. Americans are made to worship the stability of their system of government, contrasted to the succession of constitutions that have typified other nations. But there comes a point where 'stability' becomes paralysis. The campaign to amend the Constitution so that it reflects the modern world should get a boost from the Supreme Court’s decision as to whether President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (known derogatorily as Obamacare) is constitutional - even if, by some miracle, it goes against the challengers.
The tendency of the mainstream media to pretend that anything the political establishment does is okay, is as damaging as its tendency to ignore political actions by other powers. A couple of years ago I noted in this blog that then-President Putin was calling for the dollar to no longer be the world’s reserve currency. Now the BRICS countries (the major emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are holding their fourth annual summit in New Delhi, at which they are actually discussing the creation of alternatives to the Western dominated IMF and World Bank.
Such a project might have appeared as nothing more than a pipe-dream a few years ago, but the financial meltdown - better weathered by the BRICS countries than by the West, by the way - is making it ever more likely.
Stay tuned to places like France 24, (France’s English language service which still pronounces its name in French) RT, or Al-Jazeera - all of which you can find on the web - to know what’s really going on in a world where progressive change rather than paralyzing tradition is operating.
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