Health Care Reform Passes in House, America Dies

America has survived the Revolutionary War, traitors, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the first ever peaceful exchange of political power between opposing political parties, the War of 1812, slavery, the first death of a sitting president, the Trail of Tears, the Missouri Compromise, Dred Scott, the Civil War, the suspension of habeas corpus, the assassination of our greatest president, Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, the disputed election of 1876, the corruption of the Gilded Age, the assassinations of a couple more presidents, the Spanish-American War, World War I, the Espionage and Sedition Acts, Eugene Debbs, the Great Depression, the New Deal, J. Edgar Hoover, Pearl Harbor, World War II, the Smith Act, Japanese Internment camps, FDR court packing, desegregation, McCarthyism, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of JFK, the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Great Society, the Vietnam War, Watergate, Iran-Contra, the Cold War, two Iraq Wars, impeachment of the president, 9/11, and an administration that tortured and started unprovoked wars and illegally wiretapped and spied on American citizens. Just to name a few.

We have been attacked and mauled from without and from within. We have suppressed and brutalized minorities. We have allowed our most basic civil liberties to be trampled during almost every war we've ever fought. We have been so divided we've started an internal war.

Through it all, however, America has remained the greatest nation on Earth and triumphed again and again. It is tempting to call it destiny, looking back, but it is also because of the strength and resiliency of the American people. It is because of the genius of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers. It is because, deep down, Americans have a sense of justness and fairness and liberty that no other nation has ever achieved.

But it's all over, folks. We may have endured those difficult times, but we've encountered something greater than them all: The 111th House of Representatives has passed health care reform. This is the end of America. Liberty itself is now dead. The Constitution has been broken. Democracy is failing.

Nothing in our 233-year history could have prepared us for this. The rest of the world may have watched the Civil War unfold and predicted the end of the Great Experiment, but if they could have seen health care reform they would have viewed that war as a mere pittance in comparison. We may be a nation that is strong and resilient and jealous of our liberties and freedoms, but when one house of Congress passes a bill reforming a broken health care system and allowing all Americans essentially to opt in to Medicare before the age of 65, well, that is too much for even the most freedom-loving people.

So goodnight, fair America. You were a beacon of justice and liberty for so long. We will always remember you with fondness. But every great nation must pass away eventually. Because of health care reform.