How angry we have all become.

Perhaps it is because it is Spring Break and I have more time to think about things like this, but it strikes me that our nation has become quite an angry group of folks. My sense is that the Health Care debate might be genesis of all of this. On the one hand, I dismiss most national media hype around anything as having much meaning. In hard economic times they need to bring audiences to advertisers and so finding the most extreme and divisive stories does that, but I know that statistically these are fringe stories that don't represent many people.

On the other hand, of more concern to me have been some e-mails I have recently receive from an older, decidedly conservative friend of mine. There is a movie line I recall - "Just because you say it with conviction, doesn't make it true." This guy is sending out nothing more than untruths, but defending them as if it were his own personal honor.

At nearly 50 I have been spared the angry society of the 60s. I was a child then and in a part of the country where those conflicts just never came out in public.

Here I thought Gay Marriage would bring out all the civil rights extremists, but heck, that fight has almost come and gone with more cities and states (liberals and conservatives both) embracing this union.

Yet, out of left-field (and that's probably an adequate double entendre) comes Health Care. That is really the current civil rights movement. Part of our society seems very comfortable punishing another part of our society for being born with certain medical issues. Just like part of our society was happy keeping women and minorities as second class citizens, now we are happy to keep the less healthy as second class citizens.

We made the fire departments public because it was in everyone's best interest. Poor folks' houses burn just as well as rich folks' houses and fire just likes to spread - it is its nature. It is in the interest of everyone to help pay for putting out fires of people we don't know.

Yet, health care is identical in nature - disease likes to spread, and yet there is some crazy notion that if I am currently satisfied with my health care I will always be satisfied with my health care. Sure, my house may never burn down, but I will happily pay the taxes to keep the fire department fully functional. Sure, I may never get cancer, but wait - how will I really know that? How will I really know if there isn't some pre-existing condition that could exclude me from coverage. My current ignorance is bliss - but should I really go forward that way?

I know my paid taxes will help save my house or my neighbor's house, but I don't really know if my insurance premium will really do anything if I was to get sick.

People say it is an anti-tax movement. I don't believe that for a moment.

People try to defend a third-party payer system as a cornerstone of capitalism. I don't believe that either.