Rabbits and Squirrels

Rabbits and Squirrels

Some time ago, when I was more intellectually active, I recall being engaged in an absorbing discussion concerning the meaning of life and why hair on your arm doesn’t grow any longer, when one of my peers looked me straight in the eye and asked, “Do you know why there are more rabbits than squirrels?” This seemingly non sequitur question, that came out of the blue and stopped the more serious give and take about “palming the ball” during dribbling in professional basketball, caused a mostly vacant stare aimed at the Einstein who had asked the question. The answer to this dumbfounder wasn’t long in coming. With somewhat watery eyes and slightly slurred speech, the Einstein answered his own question thusly: “because, have you ever tried doing it in a tree?” The answer, of course, highlighted the importance of the practical aspects of life to the discussion participants in general and so had an obscure link to the current discussions about the meaning of life in particular. More importantly, the citizen who asked and answered the question seemed to derive a great deal of intellectual satisfaction from the exchange. To this day, I don’t know why this exchange could generate even a small amount of intellectual satisfaction from anyone, but I digress. This obscure bit of personal history popped into my nomadic musings the other day while trying to understand the esoteric explanations of the proposed Universal Health Care plan by the proponents of the plan and their supporters. The only reason that my brain forced an involuntary recall about the mating habits of Rabbits and Squirrels during the current inane health care discussions must be because of the intellectual satisfaction being displayed by both sides of the proposal when they make their points about the plan. Again, I don’t know why anyone could derive even a small amount of intellectual satisfaction from the current discussions, which reflect, in so many ways, the meaning of life discussions held so long ago by my intellectual peers. But wait, you know what? The difficulty of doing it in a tree versus the straightforwardness of doing it on the ground being an explanation of why there are more rabbits than squirrels can also go a long way in understanding what is going on in the current dustup over Universal Health Care. The only reason that the rabbits and squirrels explanation makes any practical sense at all is because you must juxtapose the difficulty humans would have “doing it in a tree” with that of the perfectly adapted squirrel, who can instead, do it in a tree with considerable ease. In the same manner, the Government proposal for Universal Health Care being advanced fails the practical test because the Government wants it’s citizens to juxtapose their personal health care with a Government run health care system. Ah yes, therein lies the problem. Most free citizens instinctively know that Governments cannot make personal health care decisions because Government is a political entity and therefore can only make political decisions, not personal health care decisions. So it is patently impossible for a free citizen to juxtapose their personal health care requirements with the political decisions that would be made by a Government running a Universal Health Care system. This is exactly why the current Universal Health Care proposal being advanced by the Government makes no sense to free citizens. The juxtapose health care impossibility results in the complete frustration of the still free citizens in trying to reconcile what the Government is trying to do with their personal health requirements without really knowing what is going on and why the Government proposal is so wrong other than the Government simply hungers for the power that a Government run health care system would bring. Of course, the result of this frustration being that voices and blood pressures continue to raise in direct proportion to the continuing Government advocacy of this plan. Hum, I wonder why there really are more rabbits than squirrels?