Schumer Says ‘Our Founding Fathers Intended’ for Congress to ‘Improve Our Healthcare System’
Why yes! Of course! That's just what Thomas Jefferson meant when he wrote:
"Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet,
our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.
Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine,
and the potatoe as an article of food."
-- Jefferson's Notes on Viriginia, Query XVII (1781-1785) This quotation is often paraphrased as:
"If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take,
their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls who live under tyranny." We also have this, from Dr. Benjamin Rush, whose signature is on the Declaration of Independence:
"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution,
the time will come when medicine will organize into an underground dictatorship....
To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others
will constitute the Bastille of medical science.
All such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a republic....
The Constitution of this republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom."
-- Dr. Benjamin Rush Quotations found at:
http://healthfreedom.info/Jefferson%20Food%20Medicine%20Quote.htm One might argue that, since medical freedom was not explicitly written into the Constitution,
the founders decided against it.
Wrong! A MUCH BROADER statement WAS written into the Constitution!
Consider the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, which are essentially as follows:
IX - The fact that the rights of the people are listed above
does NOT mean that those are the ONLY rights the people have.
And:
X - The fact that the powers of government are listed by this Constitution
DOES mean that they are the ONLY powers the government has!
