What DO Americans Value?

The other day I heard Newt Gingrich in a speech referring to the Obama administration as "secular socialist" and claimed Obama the "most radical President in history." In another interview, the former Speaker of the House railed on democrats and even the former firm of Attorney General Eric Holder for representing 17 alleged terrorists pro-bono, accusing them of 'defending terrorists' - apparently instead of 'defending Americans.'

Apparently justice has perfect vision. And it's racist.

Gingrich went on to disparage the administration for wanting to raise taxes in the current economic crisis, forcing American companies to become less competitive relative to Chinese businesses...because apparently it's never okay to raise taxes; wars will fund themselves and competitive innovation isn't one of the fundamental principles of capitalism. And these remarks don't even touch upon the healthcare debate, which I have somewhat refrained from up to this point at the risk of delving into something I can barely decipher myself. But I can't help but cringe at what has seemingly become an acceptable response to bi-partisan legislation, i.e. at best, name-calling and at depressingly worst, death-threats.

At the risk of speaking in hyperboles (which only seem appropriate and measured in response to Former Speaker Gingrich's remarks), since when did American values include abandoning our fellow citizens to fend for themselves in an emergency room, everyone is guilty before proven innocent, justice only for those people we like, pretending obscene government debt isn't just as bad for the economy and small-businesses as minimal tax increases, healthcare only for the healthy or the rich, and an expectation of idyllic democracy, in which all pieces of legislation will be mutually and happily agreed upon in perfect harmony among all the key players?

So corporate America will have to pay slightly higher healthcare packages, but small businesses will have credits to provide some type of healthcare to their employees. Your 23-year-old child will lose insurance for the next six months while you wait for the new benefit for adult-dependents to kick-in, but at least your child will have healthcare again, which he or she wouldn't have had a year ago. The insurance premiums for supplemental insurance will be hefty and take a long time to procure, but you can procure them. Is it a perfect bill? Of course it's not. It's messy and complicated and probably really screwed up in so many ways, but it's no doubt a step forward if only because we just passed a piece of legislation on HEALTHCARE - a bill being dismembered and tugged at and manipulated by insurance companies and doctors and malpractice lawyers and corporate human resources and parents of college kids and unemployed parents of infants and fully-insured employed individuals with a completely uninsurable disease. It passed! We all aren't getting exactly what we want, but I for one, who will likely pay a higher insurance premium next year, can't help but feel better about the fact that someone out there who doesn't have insurance will have it soon enough. And access to better healthcare for more means a healthier, more productive society - and at the sake of reinforcing Mr. Gingrich's secular socialist label, I have always been under the impression that Americans took care of one another. In the midst of monumental moments in our history, we have united and lifted one another up, but why not today? Why not every day? Some national tragedies are on-going, daily affairs.

A vibrant democracy, by definition, isn't clean cut. It means passing a less-than-pretty bill that may only significantly impact a select portion of Americans now, but moves us one step closer to a healthcare system with a baseline more acceptable for a leading industrialized nation. It means defending could-be terrorists because we believe, as humans, in the basic right to a fair trial by your peers - to be proven guilty, not assumed so. These are the values that make us exceptional, even in - or rather, especially in the moments when they are difficult to live by.