A recent letter printed in the Herald clearly illustrates the core issue of the health care controversy. The writer asked why anyone should care whether our society is transformed into a socialist state as long as our government takes care of its people.

Dictators are allowed to rise to power precisely because of that attitude. A real American man refuses to grovel before any other man or the state. The common phrase in Hitler’s Germany was “We don’t have freedom, but we also don’t have the freedom to be hungry.” That kind of trade-off always ends the same.

To an American, government is not supposed to take care of your problems; it is supposed to protect a system of laws that allows you to take care of your own problems and take care of your family. That attitude is essential to the survival of freedom and is precisely why the current administration and professional politicians want to force the health care bill on us against our will. The bill has nothing to do with health and nothing to do with care. It is all about control of the citizens and is trying to further corrupt the national character.

David Simpson

Kingston