Rachel Maddow: HCR Is Not Civil Rights But It’s Why We Elect Gov.

So pretty much nobody can resist the big historical comparisons in relation to this Health Care vote. This includes Rachel Maddow who, unlike Glenn Beck yesterday, grounded her comparison with a clip of Martin Luther King’s Selma to Montgomery March speech. Monday marked the 40th anniversary of that speech. Probably something Beck would have done well to take notice of particularly considering his accusation that the Dems, specifically Nancy Pelosi and John Lewis were comparing themselves to the civil rights activists. Except, of course, Lewis marched and had his skull fractured on that very day. Anyway! Maddow actually was not so interested in comparing Sunday’s vote to Civil Rights legislation, or even Medicare.

Health reform is not civil rights. This is not a desegregation order. This is not a voting rights bill. It’s not the same thing. But this is government taking a major step to remedy something that’s wrong in the country. And we haven’t done that in a really long time….when is the last time we took on, head on, a long-standing intractable problem that was hard to fix was not going to fix itself. Health reform is a demonstration that government is not just for show. Government is for fixing problems.

Then Rachel clarifies: “Supporters of health reform think that the reason we can elect people to government is so that they can take on the big challenges.” Which draws a fairly definitive line between Beck et al.’s assertions that the supporters of health reform are evil progressives who will pay in November. In short, it took less than 24 hours for cable to redraw the lines leading to November. Video below. Side note, Rachel includes an interesting clip of a young Ronald Reagan in 1961 predicting the end of America as we know it should Medicare pass. Shocking how the name and the voice may be different but the Armageddon-like words stay the same.

Related: Health Care Reform and History [NPR]

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