RUTHFULLY YOURS

For seven years Republicans promised to repeal ObamaCare, and now they have one last chance to deliver. A bill recently introduced by Sens. Lindsey Graham, Bill Cassidy, Dean Heller and Ron Johnson would eliminate some of ObamaCare’s most unpopular provisions and enact reforms that would lower costs, expand choices, promote federal fiscal responsibility, and give power back to states and consumers. Democrats have been unwilling to support any legislation that would roll back parts of ObamaCare, so Republicans have until Sept. 30—the deadline for avoiding a filibuster by using budget reconciliation—to act on their own.

The Graham-Cassidy bill’s biggest strength is the idea that states are uniquely equipped to design and implement health care programs that suit their residents. The bill would consolidate much of the federal funding given to states under ObamaCare’s coverage provisions—including money for its Medicaid expansion and subsidies to help people buy private insurance—into a single block grant, which states could use for a wide variety of health reforms.

The block grant would help address the dramatic state inequities that ObamaCare’s optional Medicaid expansion created in federal health-care funding. According to the proposal’s authors, Washington in 2016 sent states anywhere from about $400 (Mississippi) to over $10,000 (Massachusetts) per beneficiary whose annual income was between 50% and 138% of the federal poverty level. In contrast, the size of the Graham-Cassidy block grant would not depend on whether a state chose to expand its Medicaid program. Thus, it would equalize the base per-person amount the federal government gives states. In 2026 it would be about $4,400 for each qualified beneficiary. The bill then adjusts these payments to compensate for factors such as demographic differences and various levels of illness among the states.

These block grants would give states significant latitude to institute reforms. Some would decide to continue ObamaCare’s regulatory and coverage provisions. Others would create high-risk or reinsurance pools to help provide affordable coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, while making insurance cheaper for everyone else. Federal funds could be used to provide additional benefits for people in traditional Medicaid. States also could waive some of ObamaCare’s regulatory requirements to encourage greater competition, expand consumer choices and lower premiums.

Not everyone will like the reforms states pursue. But what Graham-Cassidy creates is a competition of ideas. The best programs would be emulated and the worst discarded—which is how policy making should work in a federalist system.

Equally important, the Graham-Cassidy proposal includes the structural Medicaid reforms from earlier Republican bills to replace ObamaCare. It would establish per capita caps on federal Medicaid expenditures to states, varying based on the needs of different categories of beneficiaries. The elderly and disabled would get higher allocations (which would grow faster over time) than healthy adults or children. The bill would create financial incentives for states to improve the quality of care provided through Medicaid and then to report the data.

President Trump’s 9.19.17 speech at the UN was powerfully clear – the three foundational missions of the United Nations are the three foundational missions of the United States and every member nation: to protect their sovereignty, preserve their security, and promote their prosperity.

Sovereignty security and prosperity are the three pillars that support world peace. The United Nation’s stated mission relies on the nationalism of cooperating sovereign nation states to preserve security, promote prosperity, and make the world a safer place. Here is the problem. Globalism is antithetical to nationalism. President Trump is surrounded by globalist advisors and the United Nations has become an advocate of globalism.

Globalism is antithetical to sovereignty – it is a contradiction in terms. The globalist goal is to internationalize sovereign nation states and bring them into a new world order of one-world government without defined national boundaries, without distinct cultures, and without national armies. The globalist goal is one-world order ruled by one-world government enforced by one-world army. In other words, the sovereignty, security, and prosperity advanced by President Donald Trump is diametrically opposed to the globalist objectives of world leaders who embrace globalism and to the globalist objectives of the inner circle who are now advising President Trump.

President Trump’s UN speech presented his theory of world cooperation but what about the practice?

The acknowledgement of “other” is the beginning of ethical living. When a child recognizes that he/she is a separate self it marks the beginning of that child’s ability to interact cooperatively with others. As long as the child remains completely self-absorbed he will be unable to play amicably. Self-absorption is the center of tyranny and the core of intolerance. White supremacists, black supremacists, Islamic supremacists all share an infantile attitude of complete self-absorption. There is no “other” that is equal to self – there is only self.

Every parent knows it is impossible to have a rational conversation with a screaming out-of-control emotional two year old. The child is completely self-absorbed and totally intolerant. The child is a supremacist. Cooperation whether among individuals or sovereign countries requires the acknowledgement of “other.” If sovereign countries are going to cooperate they must first acknowledge the legitimate existence of other sovereign nations. Tolerance and cooperation among nations begins with the acknowledgement of “other.”

If it is to mean anything, it will remain Judeo-Christian, open to all.https://spectator.org/the-need-for-an-american-national-identity/

Many were elated and approved President Trump’s July speech in Warsaw, Poland acknowledging the central role Western civilization plays in defining who we are and what we believe. Our freedom and survival depend on defending it, he said. Beyond that, he celebrated Western civilization as something extraordinary: “What we’ve inherited from our ancestors has never existed to this extent before.”

A vocal few, popular in leftwing opinion circles, condemned Mr. Trump’s remarks as an affront to multiculturalism, labeling his linkage of us with Western civilization, and our pride in it, as “tribalism, white nationalism, and racism,” claiming that references to Western civilization and ancestors are code words for the above mentioned vices. For some, even the broad term Western civilization is offensive and prejudicial since, as with all definitions, it necessarily conveys something distinctive and thus circumscribed.

The question we should answer is: does a country or nation need an identity, a unique identity with salient features that distinguish it from other countries and nations? In his Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville gave a resounding affirmation, a yes, to the need for a specific identity. He wrote that a corporate entity remains what it is as long as it operates by the principles upon which it was founded. When it changes those principles, it becomes something entirely different, and the success it had, based on its original formula, becomes uncertain and imperiled. It atrophies and declines. He spoke not against periodic tinkering but warned against fundamental transformation.

According to the wise and prescient Tocqueville, we define an entity by its original principles and the values that created its success. These are the seeds that animate it and supply its people with special spirit. What, then, is America’s identity?

Some say it lies in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, which grant us the liberties that enshrine our peoplehood and, on a functional level, make possible a daily life open to achievement, aspirations, and human potential. Our way of life and the blessings that have come to us depend on everyone living within this Constitutional framework and by precluding its replacement or abridgement with another set of laws claiming to be a “higher morality” or temporarily more important, or by enacting waivers or special accommodation in the name of multiculturalism.

There are those today wishing to sideline the Constitution and our historic way of life by invalidating the men, and thus the ideas, behind it. Using charges of racism as the singular and only important lens in which to judge a person’s value, they nullify the totality, the overwhelming contributions, and extraordinary sacrifices of great men and women of a different era. Meanwhile, they grant themselves unassailable superiority and rigid final judgment simply because of their claims to victimhood or for espousing one of the many isms in today’s pantheon for self-righteous virtue signaling. A nation’s historic identity is being replaced by identity politics, culminating frequently in automatic indictment of historical figures simply because their race or moral values are now out of fashion.

There are those in America wishing to define us strictly as a nation of tolerance and inclusivity, this deification resulting often, as in Europe, in tolerating the intolerable and including everyone and everything to the point of endangering those in society not ensconced within rarified and protective gates. They think the best identity is no identity. But this vacuum and void, as witnessed in Europe, allows for other assertive or aggressive identities and mores to creep within and replace, zone by zone; for surely, strong and energized identities will replace the mushy identity of No Identity.