Affordable Care Act
Dear Editor: I’ve been reading the Preamble to the Constitution. I notice some important results from a strict reading. More can be said, but I want to draw attention to a few striking passages.
First, the main reason that the people ordain the law of the land is to “form a more perfect Union.” The people do not say a “perfect Union.” It is always to be made more perfect.
Second, an ever more perfect Union is to result in the “common defense.” I’d like you notice that the kind of defense is not limited.
Certainly, the United States will defend against military threats. No restriction is made against a defense against health threats. No restriction is made against the use of science as a defense against environmental threats. The government is charged with the responsibility to organize common defense. The Bill of Rights later established that this responsibility can not be limited.
Additional language in the Preamble explicitly charges the government with the duty to care for the common “Welfare.” It is a very literal reading of “Welfare,” to note that the root of the word is “well,” as in “wellness.” Thus, the Constitution explicitly orders that the government must provide for the health of the people, and that obviously means of every person.
The Preamble is the “What” of the Constitution. The rest of this unprecedented and visionary document is the “How.”
As a literal scholar of the very clear and straightforward law of the land, I have to say that Federal Government is making a mess of the “How.”
The Affordable Care Act was a flawed but promising start on following the law. The current retraction of the Affordable Care Act is taking things backwards, toward a less perfect Union.
As for the Alaska Legislature, we still are envisioning a Union reserved only for white men. Rep. Eastman from Wasilla, actually stood up in session and insulted great-hearted Native Alaskans, especially Native women, the source of so many of the finer aspects of our character as a state. We are bogged down in racist sectionalism. This can lead only to a moral civil war. I have written to our representatives asking them to censure Eastman.
The Constitution retains the healing properties that have been on hand for so long, to guide us on the excruciatingly slow progress we have made through our gruesome history. The people of the 18th Century told us, the people of today, what direction to take. They pointed the way. It is the law of the land. It is a loving and just law. Let’s follow it and try to live up to it.
John Welsh, Sitka and Bethel
