We had all better prepare ourselves for the downside of do-gooding.
Last week, the Senate passed the hotly debated health care reform bill. The House of Representatives passed its version long before that. Both bills include a provision requiring Americans who don’t have health insurance to buy it, whether they want it or not.
Now how’s that for do-gooding?
No explanation of do-gooding or definition of do-gooders is necessary. You know what it is and who they are. In my last column I wrote about Myron Rolle, a defensive back for Florida State University who will enter the National Football League draft in 2010 and who eventually wants to become a neurosurgeon and open a free health clinic to serve the poor in the Bahamas.
Rolle is the better type of do-gooder; he wants to do good with his own money, presumably that earned from his NFL career and endorsements. The do-gooders in our national legislature — and the one sitting in the White House — are do-gooders of the worst kind: They want to fund their do-gooding with money they seize from the wallets of the American taxpayer.
But let’s be clear: The health care do-gooders have the noblest of motives. Who can argue with providing health care to anyone and everyone who needs it? Who can argue with treating sick people?
I’d like to see every single man, woman and child in the nation get free health care for life. I’d also like Denzel Washington’s looks and LeBron James’ basketball skills. I’d throw in a hot date with Beyonce in there, but I’m sure my wife — and her husband — would frown on the notion.
The intentions of the do-gooders are indeed good. But we all know the adage about good intentions. Sometimes, good intentions have unintended consequences. Remember those do-gooders who agitated, cajoled and browbeat the nation into passing the 18th Amendment in 1919?
That was also known as the Prohibition Amendment. It made the sale or manufacture of alcoholic beverages illegal throughout the land. Supporters of it thought that banning alcohol consumption would prevent drunken husbands and fathers from abusing their wives and children, among stopping other social ills.
But the law led to the rise of organized crime, which used the ban to enrich itself by selling eager Americans bootleg liquor. The 18th Amendment eventually had to be repealed with the passage of the 21st Amendment in 1933.
Nearly 40 years later came a more tragic example of the downside of do-gooding. This time the do-gooders were on the Supreme Court, which outlawed capital punishment in the Furman v. Georgia case. With capital punishment laws nullified in every state, Texas couldn’t execute a vicious murderer by the name of Kenneth McDuff.
Later, another do-gooder — a federal judge — ruled that Texas’ prisons were overcrowded. That led to McDuff being paroled. He went on another murder spree and killed people every bit as innocent as the “innocent” death-row inmates capital punishment opponents fret about us executing. He was recaptured and eventually executed, courtesy of a Supreme Court that reinstituted the death penalty and was more concerned with public safety than do-gooding.
The do-gooders want to poke their noses into every nook and cranny of our lives. They fret about our health care and pass a health care reform bill that Republicans rightly told them was unconstitutional.
The do-gooders seem unconcerned that a federal government that orders a common citizen to buy something has far exceeded its authority and started us down the slippery slope that leads to tyranny.
Do-gooders have made our health their business; they’ve even made what we eat their business. My wife is lactose intolerant. She prefers to use margarine rather than butter. But when we eat out, we’ve discovered that most restaurants serve butter, with not so much as a pat of margarine in the place.
When we pointed this out to a manager at one Maryland restaurant, he told us that his establishment had to take margarine off the menu, courtesy of a state law banning trans fats. I don’t know if he was blowing smoke up our noses or not. But if what he said is true, then my wife can’t get margarine in restaurants courtesy of the do-gooders among us.
The main problem with do-gooders is that most of them don’t know when to stop doing good.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
