Legal Commentary

The Heart of America

By Jonathan H. Adler

The health care reform advocacy group Public Option Please sponsored a pro-public option art contest.  Here is the winning entry.

I suspect many health care reform supporters find this poster inspiring for the same reasons many health care reform opponents find it disconcerting.

UPDATE: It appears the quote on the poster is actually the work of Henry St. John Bolingbroke, Viscount.  Here is the quote in Bolingbroke?s essay ?The Idea of a Patriot King,? which was written in 1738.

The good of the people is the ultimate and true end of government. Governors are, therefore, appointed for this end, and the civil constitution which appoints them, and invests them with their power, is determined to do so by that law of nature and reason, which has determined the end of government, and which admits this form of government as the proper means of arriving at it. Now, the greatest good of a people is their liberty.. and, in the case here referred to, the people has judged it so, and provided for it accordingly. Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man: without liberty no happiness can be enjoyed by society. The obligation, therefore, to defend and maintain the freedom of such constitutions will appear most sacred to a Patriot King.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on December 16, 2009 (boomark / email).