House Resolution 3200 is the health care
reform legislation being debated in hallowed
halls of your government as you read this.
And if you have picked up a newspaper or
tuned into a television news program in the
last two months, you are probably aware that
the debate over health care has swept the
country like a wildfire out of control.

In advertising campaigns and town hall
meetings across the nation, the issue of
health care reform has been debated with
great passion and theatrics.

As both sides of the debate hold so-called
town hall meetings, citizens show up and
shout words like Socialism, Communism
and Nazis, with disregard of the true meanings
of those words. Many of these meetings
have turned into what could only be called
a circus in which the audience becomes the
main act.

In Tampa, Fla. and St. Louis, Mo. fist
fights broke out. In New Hampshire a man
showed up outside of a building where President
Obama was speaking packing a pistol
on his hip. When approached by the media
he quoted Thomas Jefferson, saying “The
tree of liberty must be refreshed from time
to time by the blood of tyrants and patriots.”
He neglected to clarify which, patriot or tyrant,
he classified himself as, but oddly, he
was labeled a conservative by CNN.

Not to be outdone by a mere handgun, a
man in Arizona entered the health care arms
race with a fashionable AR-15 assault rifle
slung from his shoulder along with a pistol
on his hip. What should we look forward to
next week: a feisty grandmother with a bazooka?

While these are some of the extreme examples
of lengths people will go to express
their views, or catch the attention of the news
cameras, these rallies and town hall meetings
are filled with, for the most part, normal, everyday
people. People who are confused and
frightened. They have been misinformed by
rhetoric from both sides; rhetoric designed
to strike fear into their hearts, and doubt into
their minds.

It is doubtful that President Obama really
wants to set up ‘death panels’ in an effort to
kill your grandparents. Likewise, the country
will most likely not descend into a bankrupt
anarchy if health care is not immediately
reformed. These statements, and others like
them are designed to bring the crazies out
from under their rocks, make them dress up
like Hitler and parade in front of the media,
scaring the normal people into action.

At some point, this country began to govern
itself with fear instead of the hope for
the future that this great nation was founded
upon. This fear can be seen by simply
watching the Discovery Channel for a while.
The only good news seems to be that when
the asteroid slams into the earth tomorrow
morning, the only thing it will kill will be
the cockroaches that survived the erupting
super volcanoes, pandemic diseases, massive
earthquakes and giant solar flares that
are going to happen tonight.

Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his first inaugural
address, “The only thing we have to
fear is fear itself.” Those words ring truer
today than ever before. If this nation is to
prosper it must do so by grasping a hope for
the future, not a fear of it.