The Philosopher King and His Gilded Lawlessness

Sometimes it’s easy to ignore seemingly random occurrences and to brush them off as coincidence.  However, a few words chosen by the writers of the Affordable Care Act, combined with the recent magnification of taxation and cost of insurance in the exchanges, along with the words from Barack Obama himself at this year’s National Prayer Breakfast, causes me to piece together a glimpse into the President’s and therefore the modern Democratic Party’s ideology and vision for the future.

While reading an article from Business Insider that tells of the Obamacare costs to families, I came across the simple word, “Bronze.”

 However, the penalty can never be more than the cost of a “Bronze” heath insurance plan purchased through one of the state “exchanges” that will be created as part of Obamacare. The CBO estimates that these policies will cost $4,500-$5,000 per person and $12,000-$12,500 per family in 2016, with the costs rising thereafter.

And yes, you read the rest of that paragraph right, $12,500 per family, 3 1/2 years from now.  But the word “Bronze” caught my attention because I remembered reading in Ameritopia about Plato’s “noble lie.”

In Plato’s Ideal City, class structure is by birthright.  Levin writes,

Plato takes his class structure very far.  He invents the “noble lie”-a contrivance taught from the earliest age that each person is born of the earth rather than from a mother.  Moreover, each individual is said to be born with a particular metal-gold, silver, or bronze-intermingled in his or her body.  The metal determines the person’s status and relative worth in the City-the gold-souled citizens are the Guardians, the silver-souled citizens are the Auxiliaries, and the bronze-souled citizens are the Producers (although they are treated more like slaves) (415a). (…)
Individuals are conditioned to suppress their personal desires in favor of acting for the common good.  ”The noble lie,” therefore, is supposedly necessary because it promotes universal acceptance of the individual’s class status.

All for the common good.

In an article apparently promoting the wonderful new massive plan for your future, Dava Castillo of Allvoices writes:

Levels of care

The four levels of coverage are based on “actuarial value.” Actuarial value is a measure of the level of protection a health insurance policy offers and indicates the percentage of health costs that, for an average population, would be covered by the health plan. The four levels provided in Affordable Care Act (ACA) are:

Bronze: 60%

Silver: 70%

Gold: 80%

Platinum: 90%

In other words, for a bronze plan, the health plan would cover 60% of the cost for an average population and enrollees (on average) would cover 40%. For a platinum plan, an average individual would pay 10% out of pocket for their covered benefits and the plan would pay 90%. Those with chronic illness requiring regular care or cancer patients would benefit from paying a little higher premium, but lower out of pocket cost.

Depending on your ability to afford a policy due to your worth, you are penalized through taxation unless you buy one of these plans.  If your worth in society is somewhat moderate, you would choose (assuming you could afford it at all) a “Bronze” plan that covers 60% of medical costs, hoping that nothing major happens to you because you’d foot 40% of the bill out-of-pocket.  The best plans are also affordable by those with more worth, and has the least out-of-pocket expense. Interestingly, the constant repetition by the President that, “pre-existing conditions are covered,” is hampered by the fact that you will pay the highest premium, just like you would without his party taking over the health insurance industry.  In fact, the text of the law itself provides for these labels to be used.

SEC. 1302 ø42 U.S.C. 18022¿. ESSENTIAL HEALTH BENEFITS REQUIREMENTS.
(a) ESSENTIAL HEALTH BENEFITS PACKAGE.—In this title, the
term ‘‘essential health benefits package’’ means, with respect to
any health plan, coverage that—
(1) provides for the essential health benefits defined by the
Secretary under subsection (b);
(2) limits cost-sharing for such coverage in accordance with
subsection (c); and
(3) subject to subsection (e), provides either the bronze, silver,
gold, or platinum level of coverage described in subsection
(d).

So what, right?  Well, that would be my initial reaction since we award Olympians with Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals, it could be that the authors of the law didn’t know the philosophical beginnings of those labels and for that matter, the best coverage in a plan is platinum, which perhaps doesn’t show up anywhere in Plato’s Republic.

However, I remember Obama’s speech given this year at the National Prayer Breakfast.  I thought it was strange when I heard these words:

But I also do it because I know that far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years, and I believe in God’s command to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” I know the version of that Golden Rule is found in every major religion and every set of beliefs — from Hinduism to Islam to Judaism to the writings of Plato.

“Love thy neighbor as thyself” is second to God’s command to love God with all your heart, and is found in The Gospel according to Luke, Mark, and Matthew, in Christianity, which Obama doesn’t mention.  Obama’s injection of Plato at a National Prayer Breakfast is odd because of the suggestion that The Golden Rule (written in Laws, not The Republic,) is found among religions or “set of beliefs” that the President accepts as his philosophical standard.

The fact that Barack Obama accepts Plato’s writings as teachings about the “common good” rather than the individual’s rights bestowed upon us by God, as written by Jefferson in The Declaration of Independence, is the focus here.

Plato’s writings were given a “shout out” by this American President, instead of Aristotle, whose writings were followed by the founders.  Plato was given to philosopher kings who would rule people born into classes they cannot escape, whereas Aristotle wrote of the individual’s mind and what it can accomplish.

As Dr. Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College expressed,

The Constitution, then, is a work of art.  It gives America its form.  To fully know the “cause,” or purpose, of America, one must know the Declaration of Independence.  Thomas Jefferson, its author, mentioned four thinkers for their contribution to molding “the American mind”: Aristotle, Cicero, Algernon Sidney, and John Locke.

Studying these philosophers is a wondrous task in itself, and it greatly helps our understanding of America, just as it informed the statecraft of the Founders.  Knowing the meaning of the Declaration and Constitution is vital to the choice before us today as to whether we will live under a Constitution different than the one bequeathed to us.

It is clear in my mind that President Barack Obama’s philosophy is completely opposite the Founders, and the premise that he can’t possibly mean to rule the hoi polloi rather than allow them to govern themselves should be reexamined.