It's not over

Tomorrow the Supreme Court will probably issue its opinion declaring the Obama administration’s health care legislation unconstitutional.  The Supreme Court is now as political as the Senate or House, issuing opinions based not on the Constitution or precedent, but on ideology.

If I’m right, we have to start the whole health care policy debate again.  After all, thousands of people die every year for lack of health care insurance, and the U.S. will still have a lower life expectancy than Costa Rica and a higher infant mortality rate than Cuba.  The problems the health care bill tried to address will still be with us.

I thought about this tonight when I was reading a review of a book on the history of the Gay Rights movement entitled “Victory.”  The reviewer, Rich Benjamin, took the author to task for using that title.  Benjamin wrote in the Times Book Review that

...social movements are not “won,” any more than most social wars (against “terror,” “drugs” and so forth) are “won.”  Social progress proceeds in a push-pull ebb and flow of advancement and backlash.  America’s women have made enormous strides in political representation, even as their reproductive rights remain vulnerable to the regulatory fiat of the state and the moralism of political paternalists.  The labor movement, the immigrant movement, the antiwar movement, the environmental movement, the poor people’s movement:  can any say they’ve won? 

I’ve gotten many complaints about the title of this blog.  Sajeonogi--how do you pronounce it; what does it mean?  I don’t speak Korean--I’m not even sure it is a Korean word.  What I’ve been told it means is “knocked down four times, rising up five.”  That is the spirit thoughtful and liberal people must live by.  We can’t quit.  If the health care bill is declared unconstitutional, get up off the canvas.  Shake it off.  Keep fighting.