Michael McMahon's Time for Choosing...

Sooner, rather than later, there will be a bill before Congress that addresses health insurance reform in the United States, and when it happens, it will be Congressman McMahon's time for choosing.

If he utters the word "YEA" on any of the bills now before the various committees, it will be the Congressman's way of telling us that he supports his party's thinly-veiled contention that the age of rugged individualism is dead. His yes vote will indicate his belief that the Age of Statism has come, because, grown fat and lazy both physically and intellectually, the American voter is less concerned with hewing his own path to success and prosperity than he is with being led down the gently-sloping paved road created by his federal government, replete, as it is, with low-hanging fruit to be effortlessly plucked from trees planted by stealing the labor of others.

This is not the excuse that will be given, of course, but make no mistake, it is the underlying truth. We will be told that the cost of doing nothing is greater than the trillion-dollar cost of another government boondoggle - oddly enough, however, no free-market solutions will be entertained. To the current administration, the only road to problem-solving runs through Central Planning City, loops around Entitlement Town and terminates at Dependency Depot.

All Congressmen wear two hats; that is understood. And when it comes to delivering the requisite tonnage of pork to his district, Congressman McMahon pulls into Staten Island driving a fully-loaded semi with admirable regularity. Bringing home the bacon requires skills, to be sure, but little tough decision-making.

However, when the Congressman dons his other cap, he becomes a legislator voting on issues that affect not only every individual in his district, but every individual in the country. It is then that a choice must be made; whether he will vote to uphold the liberties endowed by our Creator and guaranteed to us by our Constitution, or whether he will vote for the marginalization of those rights, and that document, by the moral busybodies of the left - who wish to substitute their best judgment for our own. There really is no middle ground.

The country is more divided now than it has ever been in my lifetime, and that includes the era of the Vietnam War. This great rift has not occurred because the Right has moved further right - Conservatives want what they have always wanted, to be left alone to earn for themselves and their posterity the best life possible, and to enjoy the freedoms that our Constitution was created to protect.

And as always, Conservatives continue to believe that capitalism is the single most moral political and cultural system in the history of the world, allowing, as it does, for the possibility that the individual who is the least among us can to soar to unimaginable heights - an opportunity no other system could have afforded him.

The Left, however, is a different story. This chasm between us has become immeasurably vast because the Left has drifted so far from our founding principles that it has rendered Democrats unrecognizable. They are clearly no longer a party that believes in the liberty of the individual; they have become naked collectivists and re-distributionists - indeed, such ideas were enshrined by our current President in his college thesis.

Liberalism is beginning to reek with the stench of the oppressor, and it tries to cover it by bathing in the sweet-smelling perfume of government handouts. It requires no great leap of imagination to see this for what it is - a systematic approach to creating a permanent underclass, so dependent upon government largess that they will unthinkingly supply enough votes to keep Leftists in power for generations to come.

So a simple "NAY" vote by our Congressman will not do; not if it is based on some minor funding technicality, or other innocuous and transparent bit of cover.

What it is necessary is a resounding repudiation of the underlying philosophy.

Congressman McMahon is now charged with taking a real stand. Will he vote to uphold our Constitution and protect the liberty of the individual men and women who made this country great and strong? Or will he vote to give it up to the collectivists?

Will he have the courage to demand free-market solutions, or will he vote to continue the headlong rush into American decline? The 13th Congressional District of New York waits and wonders.

Time to check the moral compass, Congressman McMahon, and let us know in which direction it is pointing.