There is a new minority in America today. It is the people without healthcare. Statistics say that 40 million people do not have health insurance. Out of a country of 300 million that is a minority. What is sad is that politicians are now using the same rhetoric on these people that they have on minorities in the past.

How have politicians talked to minorities in the past?

Politicians have told minorities, “The problem is too big for you. The deck is stacked against you. Vote for us and we will take care of all your problems. If you will just yield more power to us, than we can deal with your problems.” Politicians have convinced minorities that they do not have what it takes to take care of themselves or their families.

This is the same rhetoric being used on people without health insurance. “The problem is too big for you. The deck is stacked against you. Vote for us and we will take care of all your problems. If you will just yield more power to us, than we can deal with your problems. You do not have what it takes to take care of yourself or your family.” The same old rhetoric.

I used to look at how minorities were being treated by politicians who claimed to be helping and think, “Why don’t they have more faith in themselves? Don’t they believe they can take care of themselves? Do they really believe that only the politicians can save them?”

My great-grandfather was a full-blooded American Indian. He lived when the government was beginning to give free handouts to Indians but he always refused to accept any of it. He said, “What the government gives, the government can take away.” He worked to support himself and his family and he succeeded. I believe in so doing he passed on a legacy to his descendants that stressed the importance of working hard, taking care of your family yourself, and not looking to Papa Congress to help you but rather having the audacity to look to God for help. It made him stronger and I believe it has made me stronger.

I currently do not have health insurance. I am part of the new minority. For a while I could not figure out what it was about the health care debate that bothered me so much until I realized the rhetoric being used, how it was used before, and how it has not changed…only now it is being told to me personally. The government and others are now trying to tell me how I can not help myself. They tell me how the problem is too big for me and how I need help from the government to solve my problems.