By Denise Gibel Molini

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

–Abraham Lincoln

President Obama is fighting the greatest battle of his lifetime. He is fighting to save the Constitution, the Flag and the Republic for which they stand. He is the sole voice for the 50,000,000 Americans who are uninsured and probably double that, who are underinsured. These numbers will continue to rise as unemployment and poor healthcare continue to increase in this country. The people of this country are also, under-represented. However, the special interests and corporate lobbies are very well represented. No one considers that our representatives are only Obama is fighting for us. He is fighting for our voices to once again be heard on Capitol Hill, but I do not know that we deserve for him to win.

Abraham Lincoln said, “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war”

Health care a human right?

When was the last time a Republican has gone on television and discussed how to protect the growing number of uninsured and underinsured Americans? All that I ever hear about is the effect of a public option on the profits of the Insurance companies. No one, except the President is speaking up for those who are dying because they either have pre-existing conditions, or cannot afford to pay health insurance premiums to carriers who will not pay for health care. People actually pay $5000.00 a year for coverage that begins with a $2000.00 a year deductable. This is normal for a healthy family. Does Congress speak for us? Not any longer and here is why. All we know about the government, its policies, and everything important that effects our lives beyond the reach of our personal associates, and what we see and hear for ourselves, comes to us through the media. Everything has become so large, that we are isolated within our own little circles, and our only portal to the world outside – our only means of being educated as to what really matters in our lives and the lives of our children is the media.

The only way to control the people is to control the information that they receive. The only way to do this is to control the information given by the media. The only way to reach the people is through the media. Remember the saying, “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to see it, does it really fall”?. Well, today we should update it to, “If 50,000,000 people are dying in the streets, and there is no media there to cover it, are they really dying?”

Is a Congressman elected because of who he is, what he believes, and or how well he will represent his constituent’s needs? The answer is no. He is elected because his position is well spun by Madison Avenue – which costs a great deal of money, and well positioned in the media – which also costs a great deal of money.

“Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”
– President Ronald Reagan

The truth is, that with information available at the touch of a dial, or the touch of a keyboard we are more informed and less educated than the Americans of 1776 were. The whole point of a free press, in the eyes of our forefathers, was to keep Americans educated as to what Government was doing and what the people were saying and doing. They envisioned the dissemination, by the press, of the truth, believing that educated citizens could best carry out the American Ideal of self-government. They believed that an educated citizen was the country’s only hope of protecting itself from the inevitable corruption that comes with positions of power.

“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty”. James Madison

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” –Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384

“I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” –Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:278

It would be nice to say that since the days of the framing of the Constitution we have evolved to the point where we research facts and care about the truth. However, the truth is that the boob tube has dummied us down. All that we know, and all that we believe comes to us through those boxes, large and small in our living rooms. In fact, they are so important, such vital portals to the world around us that they have been given their own rooms. There is the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom and the “TV Room”. “I heard it on the news” means, “It is the truth”. Healthcare reform is not on the news because Insurance and Drug companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually on advertising, thus buying media silence. Any committee, or branch of government that is established to oversee the actions of a specific industry is today, filled with former loyal employees of that same industry. Our government has been bought and paid for by those corporate monsters that thrive on the life’s blood of the citizens of this country and there is nothing that one man, believing so much in the people of this country that he sought their direct support for his election, can do.

In a Communist country, or a Dictatorship, there is also a media; we call it a propaganda machine. However, in our country we have the same thing. We do not have the truth, we have spin. We don’t have investigative journalism anymore – we have trial by innuendo. If you want religious propaganda – you have your own news outlets with the religious spin of the truth. If you are a bigot, you have your own news stations with a bigoted spin of the truth. Outside of that, you have corporate ownership of the media which, for the sake of financial survival, omits any truth that is overly critical of its corporate benefactors who pay for the advertising that pays for the high salaries. Then you have the shows that claim fair and honest reporting. That means, in terms of health care reform, the only thing covered is who thinks who will win. We have a media that keeps us divided. It fuels our divisions. It allows us to be brainwashed into going against our own best interests, if those interests would conflict with revenues. Whatever we hear, whatever we see, whatever we know is censored for profit.

We are a house divided against itself. And we all know that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Divide and conquer. Only we are not being conquered by some outside force, but by the corporate interests that our union would threaten.

“Every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add… artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society — the farmers, mechanics, and laborers — who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.” Andrew Jackson

Had this country only kept the spirit of the Constitution and the intentions of the founding fathers, we would really be the greatest nation in the world, the United States of America. But we have so manipulated the Constitution that we have created a mutation of the Republic we were meant to have.

“ On every question of construction, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” – Thomas Jefferson

President Obama is fighting to preserve our rights, the unalienable rights granted to us by the founding fathers in the Constitution. The right to equal access to health care is a necessary means to the right to life so granted us. However, this is a war, a war between the powerful corporations that our representatives owe their positions to, and the media owes its wealth to against the American people, the citizens our country was founded to serve and protect.

“It is a principle that the right to a thing gives a right to the means without which it could not be used, that is to say, that the means follow their end.” –Thomas Jefferson: –Thomas Jefferson: Report on Navigation of the Mississippi, 1792. ME 3:180

While in our ignorance, our reason sleeps, the President does not, for he is the one voice, the one soul fighting to return this nation to its heart, and its people to health. If he loses, we lose – note just healthcare, but everything.

“Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction.” Thomas Jefferson