Republicans and Democrats love to fight about private versus government control in almost every industry. Republicans claim the government is often inefficient, wasteful, and prone to cronyism. Democrats claim that private businesses allowed to run without regulation are greedy, sexist/racist, and unfair to the poor. Each party goes back and forth capitalizing on the failures of either privatized industries or government-run institutions, so that they can gain political power to push their agendas. Democrats were able to effectively lay the housing market crash at the feet of greedy Wall Street bankers, which lead to the Dodd-Frank Act. Now, Republicans will use the VA scandal, to gain support for shutting down the VA and replacing it with a private alternative.
I see a common theme in each of these scandals: corrupt people. The truth is that any system, whether it’s privatized or government run, will eventually fail if it’s run by corrupt people. When we allow political parties to take advantage of this common theme, we lose sight of the bigger picture, which is that the moral principles of our country are in decline. As long as we promote a culture that eschews personal responsibility and love for our creator, this pattern will continue and America will fall like every other empire in history.