I'm not sure where on the spectrum most of our (small) readership finds itself. This post is a rare political one and I'd like to make clear up front that I don't speak for all the Thinklings, only for myself. I also don't believe that salvation will ever happen through politics. Neither do I believe that one political party is perfect while the other one is evil, and I'm not heartless: I understand that living without health insurance is not a good thing and it's not my goal to deprive others of insurance.

With those caveats out of the way, a short back-story: I started my professional career working for a governmental agency. After four years of demoralizing (but easy!) work and an eye-opening baptism into the inefficiency, unexcellence and non-productivity of government-work, I got a job at a private company. The difference couldn't have been more stark. Things in the new company I worked at actually . . . worked (and I had to work hard to do my part). This experience has shaped many of my attitudes, rightly or wrongly.

In other words, my tourettes starts acting up anytime I'm assured that the Government can take on a large, complicated public service and that they will keep costs and debt under control while doing so. I don't hate the government. I just wish it would stick to what it does well, as enumerated in the Constitution. I don't distrust the government. I just don't think that it's very good at taking on large projects such as health-care. But I'd be willing to give it a shot if, like a business, failure to perform meant the ending of the activity. But that's not how government works.

As he often does, Mark Steyn is astute in his assessment of the 220 to 215 vote passage of a 1900+ page health care bill in the House of Representatives last night:

I don't like to say I told you so, but I've been saying for months now that the trick is to drag this thing across the finish line with 50.0000000000001 percent of the vote as soon as possible. From my "Happy Warrior" column in NR back in July:

Obama believes in “the fierce urgency of now”, and fierce it is. That’s where all the poor befuddled sober centrists who can’t understand why the Democrats keep passing incoherent 1,200-page bills every week are missing the point. If “health care” were about health care, the devil would be in the details. But it’s not about health or costs or coverage; it’s about getting over the river and burning the bridge. It doesn’t matter what form of governmentalized health care gets passed as long as it passes. Once it’s in place, it will be “reformed”, endlessly, but it will never be undone.

Right now, they can trade anything — abortion, death panels, whatever. The trick is to plant the seed and let the ratchet effect of Big Government take care of the rest. I said on Rush's show on Friday that if Barack Obama had been Bill Clinton he'd have woken up on Wednesday morning and begun triangulating. Instead, Obama woke up and figured that he needed more fierce urgency, and right now. The short-term hit in 2010 is worth it for the long-term benefits: Obscure congressmen will be just as happy as obscure ambassadors or obscure chairmen of obscure agencies. And the prize of permanent irreversible statist annexation merits the risk: Governmentalized "health care" puts us on the fast track to Euro-sclerosis and redefines the relationship between citizen and state in ways that make genuine conservative politics all but impossible.

Will the Senate stop it? And, if they don't, will a post-2010 GOP Congress reverse it? The way they reversed, say, the federal Department of Education?

Yesterday was a tragedy for America.