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If one were looking for examples that our elected officials' intellectual development is arrested, one would find one no better than Representative Addison Graves ("Joe") Wilson, Sr., (R-SC). This past Wednesday, Barack Obama delivered to the Congress a widely televised speech about his administration's health care proposal, and, evidently in response to the president's statement that health care would not be provided to illegal immigrants, Mr. Wilson shouted "You lie!"
In evaluating Wilson's behavior, it is useful to separate it from the issue that prompted it.
At the moment, it is difficult to say with certainty if Obama's proposal will provide health care to illegal aliens, but one can safely assume that, given the inefficiency of most government activity, it is likely that some---if not most---illegals will receive free care. Most of them can get it now anyway, since all they have to do is walk into any hospital emergency room with an ailment or injury, and they receive care (not promptly, of course) but pay nothing.
Also try to ignore the fact that politicians lie. Many of them do, and those who don't often dissemble and deal in innuendo, false accusation and hyperbole. Is it a lie to make a campaign promise you have no intention of keeping---or know you can't keep? Most people will agree that it is, and so by this measure nearly all politicians are liars, although it does not seem to matter, since we return them to office more than 90% of the time.
An evaluation of Mr. Wilson's outburst should not include how one feels about him personally. How his constituents feel about him is the only thing that matters to either them or him, and at least until this incident, his constituents loved him. We live in a representative democracy, and although officials are often torn between what they want to do and what their electorate wants them to do, they are usually disinclined to irritate the people who send them to Washington.
And it doesn't matter if one likes or even respects Barack Obama (or indeed any president)---and instead would prefer to don a cotton suit soaked in premium gasoline and walk over hot coals to avoid having to encounter him. These passions should not inform how we treat him or any official in public, particularly in the forum of a joint session of Congress, when the visible stucture of our political regime assembles. A small number of presidents were very good at their jobs, most of them were barely adequate, and some were genuinely awful. The same thing is true of members of the House and Senate, many of whom have been felons, liars, creeps, degenerates and genuine enemies of the people. But we are so lucky to live in a free society, as imperfect as it is, that we ought to revere the institution and not confuse the regime with the people who occupy it.
The troops who have risked their lives since the formation of this nation have done so not for any incumbent but for the political structure that guarantees our freedom. Read the oath for federal office: it does not swear allegiance to any person but to the Constitution, and it is the Constitution and the 300 million people it protects that are offended when the quality of political discourse is lowered to the level of that on a grade school playground. Americans who want good government will not get it until they first demand good behavior from those who administer it.
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We have travel treaties with nearly every country in the world, and if we ask that specific people not be boarded on US-bound vessels of any kind, these people will be denied at the port of embarkation.
