Reactions to the health care bill

The New York Times story about the Supreme Court hearings on health care reform (March 27) has two pictures of demonstrators. The one against the reform carries a sign saying "ObamaCare is UnAmerican." The one in favor says "Protect Women's Health."

That captures the liberals' problem in a nutshell.

The conservative view is based on a vision of what it is to be American - a conception of freedom, rooted in the history of the entire country, and supported by expansive philosophical systems. Freedom has been an ideal, a cry for justice, in every era. But women's health? When did Thomas Jefferson or Socrates ever lead a battle for health? And if you're going to fight for health, why not for everyone?

I know, of course, since I am a liberal myself, what that view is really about. Health is  important precisely because it is goes beyond traditional ideals, extending the frontiers of justice, taking into account the gains we have already made in prosperity, well-being, and, yes, freedom, and trying to go further. And women's health is important because it has been suppressed and ignored. Just  pushing for universal benefits would perpetuate the pattern of men doing better, and women's concerns getting short shrift. When there is injustice, universalism often simply covers that injustice; the oppressed must find their particular voice.

Yes. But up against "freedom," this seems a weak, narrow argument. It falls into the liberal pit of fragmented entitlement. The coalition of the oppressed has not turned into a rainbow or beautiful mosaic, but rather into a splintered, fragmented, churning mess.

We're in a culture war. The weapons are ideals. A winning ideal has to connect deep, to our most fundamental experiences of family and childhood. And it also has to connect wide, to universal themes of justice. Health care is an issue of life. It is an issue of the quality of or community and our obligations to each other. Women's health is a matter of the strength of  families and the happiness of children. And out there on the horizon is a vision of a society in which we care for each other and work together to make life better. "Hope" and "Yes, We Can" won last time - that's the frontier a have to somehow advance.