An all-American family feud
The conservative holdout in Barack Obama’s own family speaks out.
I may not be the first doctor to oppose Obamacare, but I am the first doctor in Barack Obama’s own family to oppose Obamacare. I’m genuinely proud to call Barack family. I think my cousin is a caring man and I think he means well. But he’s a man who profoundly misunderstands America and what makes it exceptional.
Barack Obama does not believe you are smart enough to choose your own car or health insurance or even light bulb without the government being involved. I believe America’s greatness lies in its individual freedom and its free-enterprise system, which has been the most powerful engine of prosperity in the history of humankind.
I don’t want to brew beer with Billy Carter or start a rock band with Roger Clinton. I am a physician, a medical director, a columnist and an author. I care deeply for our country and I’m alarmed at the direction our president is taking it.
By the time Barack and I finally met, he had already become the president of the United States and I had already embarked on a very public campaign to stop him from transforming America into a European-style social-welfare state. We fundamentally disagree with each other on policy issues but have never crossed the line into personal matters. Barack has shown nothing but kindness to me and my family and has publicly said that I’m a nice person. On that, at least, we agree.
In the 2010 run-up to Obamacare, I made the difficult decision to “go public” and take a stand for my patients, my profession and my country and oppose Barack Obama’s takeover of America’s health care system. A whirlwind of television appearances, radio appearances and newspaper columns followed. I took a trip to the Curvy Couch, visited with Sean Hannity, went on conservative talk radio and even did my own “Barack Apology Tour” through most of the 57 states.
As I describe in my book, First, Do No Harm: The President’s Cousin Explains Why His Hippocratic Oath Requires Him to Oppose Obamacare (Broadside e-books), Americans deserve a health care system centered around patients rather than centered around Washington. As a columnist for The Washington Times, I take a stand against Barack Obama’s statism wherever liberty is under assault:
“There’s something profoundly tragic about the failed presidency of Barack Obama. He was supposed to be a new kind of president, a man who embodied hope and would transcend petty politics and even race. Instead, we’re left with a downgraded America that is stagnating under the weight of its bloated government. As tragic as that alone is, even this is but a mere symptom of Mr. Obama’s larger fundamental failure: He simply does not trust the Americans who entrusted him with the presidency.”
The 2012 election will be the most consequential of our lifetimes. In fact, it will likely be the most consequential of our children’s and our children’s children’s lifetimes. America is on the precipice. We must ask ourselves a basic but difficult question: Who are we? Are we that shining city on a hill that embraces individual liberty and free-market capitalism, the things that once made us the most prosperous nation in the history of the world? Or, will we surrender our exceptionalism in return for the false promises of a government-centered society that have led so many nations to the ash heap of history?
Join us here at The Daily Caller as we have fun exposing it all, ever mindful of the enormity of the tasks that lie ahead. Come find me on Twitter or my website and help us get the word out to 5,000 of your closest friends. Be assured that I will never attack Barack with pointless, personal insults. We have far too much of that in politics. But believe me, to save the republic, I will launch the mother of all family feuds.
Barack and I are going to need our own beer summit before this thing is through.
Milton Wolf is a columnist for The Washington Times and a contributor to The Daily Caller.