'These are the times that try men's souls'

Whenever I see that clip of Harry Reid saying he won’t fund cancer research for children, I think of Strother Martin’s famous line from “Cool Hand Luke”: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”

Reid has the same squinty eyes as Martin’s dapper chain-gang captain, and based upon his determination to punish his enemies mercilessly, he may have something of the captain’s small soul as well.

Maybe you missed Reid’s exchange with CNN reporter Dana Bash, which focused on Reid’s unwillingness to negotiate with Republicans to fund those parts of government which everyone agrees are vital. In particular, Reid had blamed Republicans for the National Institutes of Health turning away cancer patients during the government shutdown. In response, the Republicans offered to fund NIH, but the Democrats refused to consider it.

Bash asked Reid, “If you can help one child with cancer, why wouldn’t you do it?”

Reid licked his metaphoric chops, then answered Bash with, “Why would we want to do that? I have 1,100 people at Nellis Air Force base that are sitting home. They have a few problems of their own.”

Talk about tone deaf! Comparing furloughed Air Force workers in his home state of Nevada to kids with cancer certainly qualifies as the bone-headed comment of the year, but Reid says this kind of thing all the time as he pits one group against another for political effect.

You can just imagine some of those cancer patients mouthing hapless Paul Newman’s comment to Strother Martin when he first finds out what kind of monster he is up against:

“I wish you’d stop being so good to me, Captain.”

Of course, what Harry Reid and President Obama want to do is enrage the public against the Republicans by claiming that it is the GOP which is shutting down the government. And they may even succeed in doing so, but let’s look at the facts. The Republican-controlled House has passed a number of bills that fund the federal government in all particulars except for one — Obamacare.

The Democrat-controlled Senate has voted down all of those funding bills, and thus forced the government to shut down. Harry Reid and President Obama say that no negotiation is possible with the Republicans — that the only acceptable solution is for the House to pass a “clean” continuing resolution to fund all of the federal government including the Affordable Care Act. They say that the Republicans are holding the government hostage in order to get their way on Obamacare.

But isn’t that exactly 180 degrees opposite of what is actually happening? Aren’t the Democrats saying that the single program known as Obamacare is more important than everything else in the federal government, and that if they can’t get their way on Obamacare they will shut down the government? That’s what it looks like to me.

Sure, this is an unusual tactic being employed by the Republicans, but remember — there has not been one Republican member of Congress who has ever voted for Obamacare. The program is anathema to every liberty-minded American, and if Republicans are not willing to pursue every means available to stop what they consider an encroachment on our liberty and our rights as sovereign people, then what good is all their talk?

If they say one thing when they are on the campaign trail and then vote an entirely different way when they are in Washington, D.C., then hell, yes, what we’ve got is failure to communicate! And don’t trot out the old saw about great statesmen being great compromisers. These members of the House are delineated in their very title as REPRESENTATIVES, not as compromisers. If they cannot deliver what they promised to their constituents, it had better not be for lack of trying! Yes, sometimes, compromise is beneficial when it advances an agenda that benefits the people, but when compromise results in servitude, there is another name for it — abject surrender.

Just as it is impossible to imagine George Washington surrendering to the British in 1776, so too should it be unacceptable to demand that Republicans today surrender to what they consider a form of tyranny in the form of Obamacare. Remember that the American Revolution began because of what the colonists considered to be the too heavy imposition of the British crown’s whims upon the American people — and thus is an apt analogy to the situation today.

No one envisions a shooting war between Republicans and Democrats, but neither should the opposition of Republicans and true conservatives to the yoke of government be taken too lightly. Remarkably, a recent Fox News poll showed that 88 percent of all voters believe that “the government is in charge of the people” while only 8 percent feel that “the people are in charge of the government.”

Such a finding confirms my supposition at the beginning of this column: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” In this country, under this Constitution, it is “We the People” who hold the power, and we entrust it to our representatives in Congress only for the purpose of doing our will. If our representatives do not have the pluck to stand against pressure, then they are of no use except to those who exert pressure.

Nor does a lost cause give legitimacy to surrender. Gen. Washington was the very exemplar of a lost cause on the Christmas night in 1776 when his Continental Army crossed the Delaware in search of the Hessian outpost at Trenton. He had suffered one defeat after another at the hands of the British and was the subject of scorn and derision among colonists, yet he persevered for a cause he believed in and ultimately prevailed.

For those who believe in the cause of liberty rather than the cause of compromise and expediency, it would be good to read again the words of Thomas Paine that George Washington ordered should be read to his soldiers the night before they crossed the Delaware and began their march to victory.

The first chapter of “The American Crisis” had just been published in the Pennsylvania Journal a few days before, and Paine’s words emboldened not just Washington but his entire army, just as they should embolden lovers of liberty today:

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

These are the first words of a treatise that remains as true today as when it was written. I recommend you all read it, and heed carefully Paine’s warning that the end result of “cowardice and submission” can only be “the sad choice of a variety of evils — a ravaged country — a depopulated city — habitations without safety, and slavery without hope.”