Yesterday, as I’m sure you’re all aware, the United States Congress passed the social-democrats’ version of health care reform.  My opinion, if you’ve been following my Twitter feed, is pretty obvious.

But I’m not here to talk about all of that.  I’m here to talk about Gratitude.  Regardless of how you feel about health care, whether you think it undermines individual liberty or provides everyone with much-needed insurance or both, we must also keep an eye on the far bigger picture.  And the far bigger picture is that we Americans still live in a country which at this point still values individual liberty, free speech, freedom of religion, and self-determination.

We should be grateful for that.

Gratitude, as Dennis Prager says, is the foundation for happiness and goodness.

You cannot be good if you are not grateful and you cannot be happy if you are not grateful.  Everything good flows from gratitude.  Everything evil flows from ingratitude.

If you are not grateful, you develop a victimhood mentality, and that mentality is why most people commit evil, from petty theft all the way up to genocide, because they believe they are not bound by the same moral conventions the rest of us are because, as the old Disney song goes, the world owes us a  livin’, and nearly any means become justified in which to make that happen.

Having a sense of gratitude will also make you happier.  You are happy that you live in this country, despite its faults, and therefore you will be kinder.  You will be more charitable, and you can spread your gratitude in that way.

But one of the biggest problems with this version of health care reform is that it tells us that we deserve free health care. We are entitled to it.  And when we don’t get it, because all law is in some way disappointing, we will feel angry, which also breeds that victimhood mentality.

For those of you who are not on the left (whether you are a conservative or not), having a sense of gratitude and spreading that gratitude around is perhaps the best way to fight the effects of entitlement that  the health care bill (just like previous social policies like The Great Society) will inflict on our country.

Regardless of what happens in the courts, in November, or with the economy, or whether there really will be a shortage of doctors and medical students, whether there will be rationing or not, never forget that we still live in the most free country in the world, even if it is less free than before, and never forget that we’re Americans.  We’re adaptable yet stubborn, and a principled yet live-and-let-live kind of people.  Life will go on, and health care isn’t the only arena in which individuals’ relationship to the state and their ability to be grateful is being threatened.  There is much to do yet.

So be thankful for the blessings you have.  Don’t be ungrateful for the ones that have been taken away from you.