I want to share with you the thoughts of a man who last voted for a democratic president in 1964 and who until about a year ago, pretty much considered himself a moderate Republican. I want to talk to you about myself and why I can no longer remain a Republican. That’s not to say I am suddenly a fan of Obama and his policies, though I have never thought him to be a Marxist or a Fascist or a native of Kenya.

Everyone across the political spectrum holds one thing most valuable, above everything else. And that thing is the well being of their children. Every year, according to the National Academy of Sciences, here in the US, about 18,000 people die for lack of medical care because they have no insurance. I know this figure all too well. My only son, our eldest child, a boy just turned 20 last June, is now one of those 18,000 lost souls because we could not obtain timely medical care after I lost my health insurance when I lost my job because the company I worked for went bankrupt. I too will soon file is now one of those 18,000for bankruptcy as my wife and I used our life savings to try to save our son. We even ran through the college savings account for our two younger children, our two daughters. Actually last Christmas they gave their brother and us a card and it was their gift of turning back their small college trusts for the use of their brother’s care. In the end, our neighbors and friends, without ever being asked, helped us bury him. We did not even have the money for a proper funeral.

The only comfort I have, and I want to thank everyone reading this, is that when his chronic heart disease really began to effect his health and he heart began to give out and he collapsed on our front lawn in April, we were able to take hum to the local hospital’s emergency room and the staff was wonderful and they performed everything known to man to try to save him and then in the end did everything to make him comfortable. I thank all of you because I was already broke and you the tax payer (I have no income presently so I pay no taxes) paid for all of his care. You spent for over $315,000 in surgeries and doctor care and an extended hospital stay–yes all that wonderful, but ultimately useless (too late) care when I would have been happy to pay almost any premium, even ones I could not afford, if just one insurance company and been willing to insure Ronnie.

You who are fighting for the status quo and for smaller government I have this to say. If its health care reform you want to prevent you are fighting for something that will continually cost us more and keep us in last place among the developed nations when it comes to adequate health care of its citizens and a lower cost. The French spend about 11% of their GNP on Health Care and cover all their citizens, with a mixture of private and public health care. They fund when necessary to cover the uninsured but they don’t run the health care system and they aren’t on a single payer system like the UK. We already spend 17% of our GNP on health care and 21% of Adult Americans are uninsured and in many cases can’t get insurance.

After Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 Americans in 2001, we went to war and spent hundreds of billions of dollars ensuring that this would not happen again. This led to the biggest government deficit in US history. Yet every two months, that many people die because of our failure to provide universal insurance — and yet many members of Congress want us to do nothing? And all of you who never spoke out against going to war (I did not either) nor protested the billions being squandered on what was supposed to be a very short war (I didn’t either) now are suddenly worried about government spending the save 5 times the number of Americans every year.

Can anyone of you still say to me we should not do this, even if the well respected Congressional Budget Office says a re-drafted bill does not increase our deficit? And if you can please dear God tell me a cogent reason, don’t scream it’s socialist. Because we have had socialized medicine for 40 years. It’s called Medicare. We have not become Marxist because we guarantee Grandma and Grandpa health care. Why won’t we want that for every US citizen?

Finally, and I thank you if you are still reading, I don’t think the reaction from the right is about the growing deficit, or bigger government. Those were major issues that occurred all during Bush’s presidency. No what I once thought it might be about, I know for sure it really is about. When Congressman Wilson shouted at the president he screamed out “You lie” but what he really wanted to say “You lie boy”. As a rational man he knows the health care reform bill does not cover illegal immigrants but emotionally (as portrayed by his outburst) he just can’t stomach an African American, a black man, a Negro, acting superior to and governing over a white man. He was thinking the N word when he screamed out. And the Tea Bag members demonizing the President and his wife, painting him to look like Hitler and thing equally odious, rarely rationally state anything relating to policy or legislation.

The Tea Party is the 21st century of the Ku Klux Klan egged on by such bigots as Rush Limbaugh and the guys over at Fox News.

But I don’t state this to sling mud. I don’t hate any of you. But I think many of you have failed to think it through logically. And you don’t have too. Just listen with your heart and you will see that you are being asked to help fight the battle the big banks and insurance companies want to win. And you would not be so rev’d up emotionally if you did not have some hidden prejudices in your hearts. For the sake of this country, I ask just one thing in the name of my deceased son. Pick out just one person you know from work or your neighborhood who you know is for health care reform, or who is pro Obama or who tends to vote democratic, someone you know already and ask them what they think about the current issues being tackled, health care, funding for more foreign wars etc. And without a predetermined point of view, just listen and decide again Even if you don’t change your mind as to policies, you may at least change your mind as to approach and presentation.

If I change any minds in what I write, then I can begin to believe that my Ronnie did not die in vain.