The health care reform debate will begin to rage again as Congress and the president return from their summer recess and vacation. Citizens on both sides will re-energize to reiterate their cases for and against the 1000-plus page bill that the Democratic leadership tried to push through in a two-week period prior to the recess - and before anyone could decipher the proverbially "devilish" details. 

The strategies employed by the two sides are remarkably different, however. Those against the plan, largely conservatives, site specific objections to items contained in the bill. Those in favor of the bill, especially those in favor of the so-called public option, resort to name-calling. Why? Why can't those in favor of government run health care make their case instead of trying to silence the opposition?  

The Left's desire to have the government control health care is nothing new in the United States. The first major candidate to campaign on the idea was Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. Subsequent tries were made under FDR, Truman, LBJ, and Clinton, to name the most prominent.  The ultimate goal of reaching the single-payer plan has yet to be reached, yet the government was able to incrementally increase its encroachment. With each cycle came a lessening of market forces, less interest on the part of the patient in the cost of a procedure and thus, escalating costs - inevitable when the recipient of a service has no interest in its price. (If your favorite restaurant offered free dinner on Sundays, would more customers choose steak or a hot dog?) 

So let's ask the question again. Instead of calling people swastika-carrying Nazis, why can't Nancy Pelosi explain how access to care will be increased by dumping millions into a system with a fixed number of providers?  

Instead of calling people at town hall meetings thugs and Brown shirts - accusing them of exactly the behavior exhibited by the SEIU thugs organized to shout down opposition - why can't Harry Reid explain how spending trillions to create a huge new bureaucracy will cut costs?

Instead of asking those who "made the mess" that this legislation is designed to clean up to quiet down and get out of the way, why cant President Obama explain how a citizen will keep their present insurance, once their employer realizes it can shed a great deal of cost by canceling their health coverage and dumping everyone onto the government plan? Do we not already have a precedent with pensions?

Supporters of universal health care could acknowledge that honest people may have a Constitutional objection to the Federal government running their healthcare, and explain why you won't have to go blind in one eye before the system will provide treatment for macular degeneration - as is the practice in England. Instead, they refer to people like that as racist, unable to accept a black president.

We could have an honest discussion of how increased government control, perhaps a complete takeover, will improve health care for all. We could compare it to auto insurance, where prices are low, competition is high, and consumers can pick and choose the coverage they need - across state lines if they choose. No crisis in that industry. Instead we shout down old ladies and get in the face of people at town hall meetings.

The ultimate problem is that architects of government-run health care know exactly what their legislation will do. They also know that if they presented it to us honestly that it wouldn't have a snowballs chance in hell of passing. It's sad that enough people will fall for the platitudes ("Health care for all", "Reducing costs", etc.) to give this insidious plan the chance at life that it has.

However, one can dream. Dream of a Senate not full of progressives, for whom the Constitution has been just a quaint old document and an annoyance to be sidestepped whenever possible – going back as far as Woodrow Wilson. (That’s nearly one hundred years, folks. No wonder our Republic is so far off the rails.)

Imagine instead a body full of Senators who understand and revere the Constitution; who understand how the Constitution provides the means to limit the Federal government not the people. If some parallel Senate was composed of such people the questioning of Judge Sotomayor might go something like this:

Judge Sotomayor, The Fourteenth Amendment says, in part, that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This amendment, adopted in 1868, expands on the language in Article 4, Section 2, which says, “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” Please reconcile these two examples - clearly endorsing the ideal of equality, regardless of a person’s external appearance – with your finding in the Circuit court that the civil rights of one group of firefighters in New Haven, CT take precedence over another group, solely because of their external features.

Judge Sotomayor, you stated that in deciding cases before the Court, you intend to apply a certain amount of empathy towards minorities and those ‘less fortunate,’ however you define that term. Please cite the article and section of the Constitution that allows Supreme Court Justices to use anything other than a fair interpretation of a case, against Constitutional allowances of the government’s power, to decide a case. You do understand that the lady holding the scales of justice is blindfolded for a reason, do you not?

On more than one occasion you mentioned that the fact that you are a Latina would help you reach better conclusions on the Bench than a white male. Two questions on that: What, exactly, do you think the chances would be of this body confirming any white male who had made the same statement – professing his superiority because of race? And secondly, given our line of questioning on true equality – not the lip service that we give to equality today – wouldn’t it be extremely unfair to ignore a statement like that from you when it would almost automatically disqualify someone else?

Don’t hold your breath for any of these questions to be asked of the nominee – and if they were, the questioner would certainly be derided as the worst misogynist-racist in existence anywhere.

But, one can dream.