Healthcare and "the" mandate: Testimony from an "unconservative" Catholic

Leave it to the Dutchman to offer a unique perspective on the issues of the day. I wish I had been more faithful to my Google Reader a few months ago, when this post first appeared; alas, it was impossible, as I was studiously avoiding anything that didn't relate to the Lenten presentations I was writing at the time. Now, even though it is less newsworthy, his post is still timely:

In 2008 I was at a Christmas party given my one of my ultra-Catholic friends. These are the kind of people who sing Christmas carols in Latin, say Rosaries for the unborn, and hold prayer vigils outside of Planned Parenthood clinics. These are people who do not use contraception, home-school their kids, and would never wear anything so revealing as a sleeveless dress. This was right after Obama was elected, but before he was inaugurated and, naturally, there was a good deal of speculation about what he would do. Healthcare was obviously on the table and I would say that two-thirds of the people there favored socialized medicine. That’s right; more than half the people in that room, people as culturally conservative as it is possible to be, favored a Single-Payer System – but with one proviso: you had to keep abortion out of it. The next day, I wrote President-elect Obama a letter with this simple message: you can sell a single-payer system to conservative Americans if you keep abortion out of it. (I also sent this same letter to David Axelrod, whom I actually know and have done business with.)

Read the rest here.