What If I don't want to be managed?

I listened to the commentaries on the supreme court decision on "managed" health care.  It is being hailed a a victory of the Obama administration, and it is, though I suspect it might be a pyrrhic victory.  People who supported the mandate were mostly surprised when the Supreme court sided with those who said it was unconstitutional, though a slim majority said it was constitutional as a tax, which is of course what the Obama administration publicly said it was not a tax, while arguing before the Supremes that it was.

People may not like a tax so much as they like "managed" care.

What I find most offensive is the idea that that government exists to "manage" individual health care, or individual anything for that rate.

Recently I was talking with two friends, one a Democrat and another a Republican, about the corruptibility of politicians.  Both of them agreed with a statement by Gardner Taylor that politics is a noble profession made ignoble by the people who practice it.  People, by and large, are not smart. They are greedy, corrupt, and self-centered. It worries me that my life is to be managed by a group of people who got fifty-one percent of their vote.  

For my part, I don't want to be managed, not by them, or by anyone else. The Lord is my shepherd, not some  bureaucrat or politician, and I'd like to keep it that way.

Sometimes (they say) it is for my own good.  People who are managed for their own good are called children. I am not a child. 

Sometimes (they say) it is for the good of others. People who are managed for the other good are sheep or cattle.  I am neither sheep nor am I cattle. 

I exist for my own sake, with my own intrinsic worth in God's eyes. I do not wish to be told that my sole purpose in life is to involuntarily  feed others.

People who value individual freedom over government management for the good of all are called selfish, because they do not have the interest of the poor at heart.  That may be true of some, but is not true of me. I stand behind anyone in my desire to help the poor. I have give regularly out of my own pocket to help others.  I have spent years as an unpaid volunteer in ministries to help the poor and the hungry. I have worked among the poor  in the city, in the country, and abroad.  I have looked into the eyes of destitute men, women, and children.   I know their nobility and struggles, their faults and their shortcomings.

I also know that I don't want my money taken from me and  given to heartless, corrupt bureaucrats who sees the poor as a job, who have no intention  of seeing the poor stop being poor, but prefer to keep them in a dependent relationship where they are the benefactors and the poor are the poor are treated like helpless children. 

The poor are not children; neither are they saints.  They can be  greedier and more corrupt than the rich men about whom they so often complain. They love money just as much, they are just not as good at making it. 

I have known families, trained for three and four generations to get the most out of the system without putting anything into it.  I have seen the grandmothers train their grandchildren how to lie on forms and look pitiful, so they can get more from the government pot. I know of the people who work for social agencies who get government money who call up their friends to be first in line to get it, and politicians who hand out money like it was candy in exchange for favors.  I have seen the industrious, working poor deprived of benefits because they were not bred to be hustlers. They have no benefit left, because those who know how to work the system. I have seen citizens  in other countries who are poorer than almost anyone here, kept down by the jealousy of their peers and the corruption of government officials who distribute all wealth to their cronies.  They are the end result of the a country "managed" by their government. 

Free money is to  a country what heroin is to the body. It is addictive, degrading, and ultimately  corrosive. The only way a person can escape poverty is when they gain the self respect to throw off easy assistance and  earn their own daily bread.  The only way for a family to escape poverty is when the industrious members quit subsidizing those who are not.  When those who won't work discover they must work,  then they begin to earn back their own self respect and rise to their own.

But (I am told) I am not smart enough to see the reason I must trust my charity to bureaucrats.  I have to be managed for the benefit of a mindless,  soulless imaginary creature called "social welfare."

 I do not have to be taxed by the government to take social responsibility. I do it anyway.   Most people I think who are responsible enough to pay their own way welcome the opportunity to pay for others who cannot. They just don't like the people take their money,  skim off a percentage, and then treat public charity as their own personal slush fund, to support whatever project they suppose may help .  This is charity without effort, and largess without discernment.

If this country wants to run health care that way--fine.  But to whatever degree I can avoid being managed, I will. 

The Lord is my Shepherd, I do not need another.