Written on the road: matters of definition.

Whenever liberal judges or politicians bring up the state of justice overseas in discussing the laws here, a certain segment of the far right tends to go into a tizzy.

"New World Order!" they say.

"One World Government!" they say.

Pish, I say.

We're just taking stock of the world and our place in it. If we happen to notice that we're engaging in a practice that only countries Bush 43 identified as members of an "Axis of Evil", we wonder about the company we're keeping, you know?

We're not interested in giving up our sovereignty. We're interested in using it... using it to better ourselves as a nation, to form a "more perfect Union"... more perfect today than it was yesterday, we hope, and possibly even better still tomorrow.

And at its heart, that's what this health care debate is about: how we define ourselves as a people, how we define ourselves as a nation.

Is it enough to be a free people and a powerful nation? Does it not matter what we do with our power and freedom?

Is it enough that America is great?

My thought is that greatness is okay, so far as it goes, but it's better to be great and good than the alternative.

Those who are against reform say that there's an effort underway to change America, to redefine what America is and take it away from our roots and traditional values.

Folks, that's going to happen anyway. It's happening anyway.

A shining beacon on the hill? Not when we lag behind every other developed nation in how we treat our citizens.

A Christian nation? Not with how we do unto the least of us... and I don't know exactly who shall know us by our works, but probably not anyone we'd want to be seen with.

The land of opportunity? Face it, we've had a mixed record on that one. Unavoidable, really... if success doesn't bring rewards then "opportunity" is worthless, but if the rewards are meaningful then the rich hold advantages over the poor that carry across generations, resulting in unequal opportunities.

But even if we've never been perfect in an area, we can still do better or worse and right now we're doing much worse than we should be. The rising cost of health care shackles people to jobs by making a lot of traditional opportunities... entrepreneurship and education, for instance... too risky for the rewards.

The land of the free and the home of the brave? It's hard to be brave when you have to choose between food, rent, and medicine. It's impossible to be free when your choice is death from untreated but preventable conditions or a lifetime of onerous debt.

America is redefining itself by degrees. Like a satellite in a decaying orbit, the great and soaring dream of the world's first Democratic Republic will come crashing down if we're too afraid to make some necessary course corrections. We will become a third world country with scattered pockets here and there of breathtaking privilege. Within one hundred years, we may not be one nation indivisible, but two nations divided: a permanent underclass of workers who find that both the simple necessities of life and the opportunities for advancement are rigidly controlled and rationed in order to keep them in bondage, and an upper class that pats itself on the back and congratulates itself on having "made it" while exhorting the teeming masses to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

(Hopefully somebody among the underclass will be educated enough to appreciate the irony when the ruling class identify themselves as John Galt and claim the millions whose labor supports them are parasites and looters.)

And you know what? Eventually I think the underclass will pull themselves up... and it will be ugly. When our descendants some centuries hence read about "The American Revolution", they won't be reading about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. They will be reading about something that would make the Bolsheviks blush and Robespierre go "Oh, my."

Because that's what it would take to upend a social order that entrenched in a nation so large, so great, and so powerful.

And with that, the redefining of America will be complete.

Call this speculation. Call this hyperbole. Call it a bit of fiction dreamed up by a purveyor of the same.

But don't be afraid to look at the path we're on and see where it's leading... not where you want it to lead, not where you think it should lead, but where it actually is leading: the gap between the rich and poor... the increasing barriers to opportunity... the almost pathological gutting and cutting of any tool we give ourselves to use our collective might and wealth and freedom to help our fellow citizens.

Making access to our leading edge health care system a public concern, a national concern isn't so much about "redefining America" as it is about examining our existing definitions and seeing how we measure up.

I think we can do better. I write this without irony: we can put a man on the moon. We can split the atom. We wrapped a continent in bands of iron and a world in bands of information.

Anybody who says we can't provide health care is underestimating us. Anybody who says we shouldn't... well, with as much respect as I can muster, I disagree with their definition of America.

An actual blog post, not about healthcare.

I have a feeling that I pushed my body a little too hard on this trip, but given that I appear to have survived it, I don't think I'd change my mind about it if I did it over again. I'll blog more about it throughout the week. Actually, I think Ariella might be blogging about it at some point, too, if she can remember her password. On top of genuinely and unironically enjoying things like the Magic Kingdom, it was a great chance to do something with my parents, to get a little traveling done, and to see hnmic, who I'd previously met on the train last March.

(He's a lot hotter looking than I remembered. As I had no memory of what he looked like, that might not sound like much, but he made enough of an impression this time that I felt the need to make a note of it in my PDA.)

One thing I might have done differently: not accidentally saving over the classroom vignettes I was working on the ride back to Nebraska with roleplaying notes. Grrrr. Oh, well. I expect I'll be able to recreate most of them, as they were fairly short. But the next MU story that goes up is likely to simply be chapter 413, not the Other Tales that was advertised.

Interesting thing: so far, not one person has said to me "I really hate the way you're taking more time to write longer, more intricate pieces". That wasn't anything I planned... it grew out of my desire to make sure that certain story ground was covered while not curbing my personal preference for letting the story sprawl in a natural fashion. But they have had their benefits. Sometimes the story flows easier when I keep it going instead of looking for a breaking point, for instance.

I've also had feedback indicating that the "next time" blurbs are appreciated by the readers, which is good. I started doing them privately as a "note to self" to make sure the story ground was getting covered.

Another interesting thing: my readership goes up and down, in some ways seasonally (even going back to when I just wrote Star Harbor Nights and didn't have much readership, it was always lower in the summer), but the income it generates varies less wildly. The people who are paying me to write are committed, it seems, and that's what keeps me committed to writing.

On that subject, though: some people have cancelled their sponsorship of the currently-languishing side stories. One person even sent a sort of apologetic note about it. If anybody else is thinking about dropping sponsorships, don't worry about me taking it personally or that it will affect my decision on what to do with the stories. I like writing them. I know people who love reading them. But I don't know if I can keep the momentum on them that I need to. I'll be writing some more on them soon. I certainly don't expect anyone to sponsor them while they're idle.

At the same time I'm saying that, though, I'll also say this: if you've enjoyed the most recent Tales of MU installments quite a bit, if you like the direction things are heading, if you want to show your approval for the continued improvement of my craft as a storyteller... there are concrete ways of saying so.

Anyway, right now I am a bundle of sore and tired and ideas. The next chapter of MU is coming along slowly but it is coming along well.