I’m engaged in the ongoing process of pondering what could cause Americans to engage in open rebellion against the federal government.  No, I don’t think the line has been crossed–yet–and for those federal anti-terrorism watchers who don’t have the time to watch Islamic terrorists, but are almost certainly monitoring blogs like this (after all, I believe in the Constitution, democracy, and am a veteran, so I’m particularly dangerous) I’m not advocating such rebellion.

Credit: National Geographic

Credit: National Geographic

The anti-gun legislation recently defeated in the Senate–if passed there and in the House, would surely have led to almost universal non-compliance, and if the Obama Administration was foolish enough to send storm troopers out to seize lawfully owned guns, innocent Americans would inevitably have been killed.  That would have crossed the line for many.  That is far from the only danger.

If this report is true, it’s going to kick rebellion closer to the line:  

Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.

The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.

A source close to the talks says: ‘Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.’

The authors of the piece are virtual masters of understatement:

Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public. By removing themselves from a key Obamacare component, lawmakers and aides would be held to a different standard than the people who put them in office.

Democrats, in particular, would take a public hammering as the traditional boosters of Obamacare. Republicans would undoubtedly attempt to shred them over any attempt to escape coverage by it, unless Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) give Democrats cover by backing it.

“Hypocrits?”  Democrats “would take a public hammering?”  You don’t say.

And why would our political masters want to exempt themselves and their underlings from a law that is so good for us we’re not capable of recognizing it?  A law a consistently growing majority of Americans would see repealed?  Apart, I mean, from the trivial facts that the entire undertaking will bankrupt the nation and destroy our health care system?

There is concern in some quarters that the provision requiring lawmakers and staffers to join the exchanges, if it isn’t revised, could lead to a “brain drain” on Capitol Hill, as several sources close to the talks put it.

“Brain drain?!”  Do the people stupid enough to vote for this ongoing train wreck have any brain available to drain?  And shouldn’t Republicans stupid enough to engage in such despicable bargaining–again, if it’s true–be permanently institutionalized?  I suspect most Americans would see losing much of the so-called “brain power” within the Beltway as a sign of enlightenment rather than an intellectual deficit.

Should the moral and mental Lilliputians of DC do this sort of thing, I shudder to imagine the response of the American people when Obamacare starts denying treatment to their families and people start suffering and dying.  Our political elite don’t think nearly enough of this.  They are few, weak and foolish.  We are many, strong and forged in the crucible of rebellion and liberty.

For such people, remaining in political office might, one day, be the least of their worries, and they’re apparently not nearly smart enough to understand that.