Mandates Quotes
At the time being a seaman was a very dangerous job with a high rate of injury and disease from foreign ports. Congress passed and President John Adams signed this law which provided some marine health services for seaman. However, the reason it is politically most interesting is that it is the first Federal mandate on private citizens. Further it actually required that sailors who were privately employed purchase health insurance. The Federal government was the single payer in what many conservatives would call “socialized medicine.” What is fascinating is that in the huge political debate of the Obama administration over the mandate to buy health insurance this precedent virtually never appeared in the arguments, court cases, news media and political debates. Forbes Magazine ran an article about it in 2011 (http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2011/01/17/congress-passes-socialized-medicine-and-mandates-health-insurance-in-1798/2/ ) As passionate as everyone else was, they just didn’t know the political history of our own country enough to use the example in the debate. This was also the first example of Federal “withholding” where the employer collects the money from the individual by withholding it from his pay and turns it over to the federal government.
For most of the opponents of Obamacare, it was definitely about health care. For a few like Paul, the fact that under Obamacare, it was the fact that it was mandatory for everyone who could afford it to buy health insurance that was unacceptable. The government in a free country in his view should not require citizens to buy a specific product. Obamacare supporters observe that society has an interest in that if someone who refuses to buy health insurance gets seriously ill, our societal mores will require his to be treated and we all have to pay for that treatment. Without the government mandate, a group of people will simply get a free ride, getting health care if they need it, but never contributing their fair share. Paul and many libertarians do not deny the argument or its basis. They simply argue that such a mandate is unacceptable even for a very worthy purposes. Any loss of essential freedom, can be—and often has been—justified be numerous worthy reasons. Slave owners used to justify slavery be all the good it did for society, economic development, culture, etc. Principled libertarians also oppose, the draft, government wiretapping, drug illegality, and many other steps where some freedom is lost – given up for a worthy purpose.
The implication is that often the interpretation is unrealistic. In this case, President George W. Bush won reelection by a few percentage points and interpreted this as a mandate.
He and his brother are the largest political contributors in the United States, so they have enormous influence on Republicans (they only make political contributions to conservative organizations).
Donald Trump had won the presdiency by winning a majority of the votes of the Electoral College. However his opponent Hillary Clinton garnered about 2 million more votes. Several other presidents have won with a minority vote. These occurances did not affect the Presidents' legitimacy as the Electoral College was specified in the Constitution, However, it did undercut the concept that the President had a mandate. Other presidents just carried on and either earded the respect of the majoprity of AMericans or did not over time. Howevewr, Trump, who was so sensitive and fragile about his image, kept responding to comedians like Bee by claiming that the only reason he lost the poular vote was voter fraud by illegal immigrants. However he never offered any evidence of such and there were no convictions for same or even arrests and trials.
He and his brother were the largest political contributors in the United States, so they had enormous influence on Republicans (they only made political contributions to conservative organizations).
