Obamacare, Compromise, and Freedom

"I...don't...bargain."
--Samuel Girard (The Fugitive)

Rand Paul's 13 hr filibuster in March has now been exceeded by Ted Cruz who has been standing on the Senate floor for over 19 hrs in opposition to Obamacare.

There are many conservatives who think this opposition is misguided. For example, Thomas Sowell thinks that this effort will result in no victory for Obamacare opponents while distracting public attention away from the various problems and scandals that surround the Obama administration. As he sees it, Sowell thinks that symbolic efforts such as Cruz's are a gift to liberals. Sowell would rather pick fights that he thought he could win.

The problem with this line of thinking is that much liberty can be lost while waiting for such favorable situations to develop. In a context of ever growing government, social power is constantly converted to State power, which reduces capacity for individuals to fight back or resist over time.

A common mechanism employed by the State that drives gradual decline of freedom is political compromise. When one side seeks an outcome that reduces freedom, any compromise with that side reduces freedom. The more compromises that are reached, the more freedom declines.

Here is a nice article that discusses the dangers of compromise in the context of Ted Cruz's resistance on the Senate floor. It draws from the story of Anatoly Sharansky who spent a decade as a prisoner in a Soviet gulag. Sharansky refused to obey even mundane orders from his prison-masters because "Sharansky knew that to compromise even a little would lead to compromising a lot."

If you value freedom, then you do not compromise it even a little, because over time it leads to compromising a lot.

That is what Ted Cruz's actions reflect.