For all of those out there who have cried socialism at the prospect of healthcare reform, here’s a little more information on how the current free market system is serving Americans.

The American Journal of Medicine recently published a study which documents that 62% of ALL the bankruptcies in 2007 were attributed to medical problems. Not job loss. Not home foreclosure. Not irresponsible speculation or drug addiction. These were people who got sick, needed care, in most cases had insurance, and still couldn’t pay the bills.

Also the rate of bankruptcies due to medical costs rose 50% during the Bush administration.

This is all the more disturbing because the data came from a period before the current financial collapse.

This wasn’t just poor people either. These were middle class families who exhausted their life savings trying to pay their bills.

There is something fundamentally wrong with a system where hard working people can’t afford to fall ill.

That’s why the government has to step in to provide at least some baseline level of affordable coverage which doesn’t bankrupt individuals or businesses. You can call it whatever you want, but it is clear that those countries who are making this investment have lower healthcare costs per citizen, healthier populations, more financially secure citizens, and more profitable businesses.

As we’ve seen with the recent financial collapse, the free market system is not the answer in all circumstances. Healthcare is just another example. Kudos to the Obama adminstration for recognizing that the key to our recovery is dramatic change in the way healthcare is delivered in this country.

If we are talking about military steps, in the modern era we say it is over and go home.

The Obama administration is already taking those steps in Iraq and making the investments to get Afghanistan to the point where we can do that too.

In a more profound way, though, the way we win the war on terror is to eliminate enemy.

If there is no enemy, there is no terror.

If there is no enemy, there is no war.

The Bush administration wanted us to believe that we could kill all our enemies because we were so much more powerful than they were.

The reality is that we can’t kill them all, and our efforts to do so only made them stronger because two rose up to take the place of every one that we killed.

Instead President Obama is going to unmask our enemy and reveal that they are more like us and we are more like them than either of us would like to admit.

He is doing that by reaching out to the Muslim world to change their perception of the United States. What better person to do that than a brown skinned man with a muslim-sounding name.

The Muslim world won’t trust the United States overnight. They will want to see tangible evidence that the United States is serious about peace in the Middle East and in Iraq.

Obama is, however, laying the groundwork. He intends to treat the Muslim world with the same sort of respect that we would like to see from them. He will follow that with a diplomatic plan to address the issues that represent barriers to peace.

Ultimately, he will succeed and win the war on terror by turning our enemies into our friends.

Some who read this are going to immediately assume that it is naive to assume that one man could have that effect. One group, however, is taking Mr. Obama’s initiative very seriously. That group is Al Qaeda. If their actions are any indication, they are afraid of him. If President Bush was their greatest recruiting tool, President Obama may be their greatest enemy. I believe he is their greatest enemy because he knows he can win this war.

One of the great things about our democracy is that old friends can have fundamental differences about things like economic policy, and yet the country still moves forward. That’s because every four years we all get to vote.

The last eight years President Bush earned the opportunity to test trillion dollar tax-cuts, unrestrained capitalism, and cowboy foreign policy. The results of that experiment pretty much speak for themselves.

The American voters had a clear choice in November. Republicans didn’t offer many new ideas. Instead they chose to attack the guy I liked. They called him inexperienced, a socialist, a friend of terrorists, a baby killer, and a Muslim. A majority of voters saw through that. Now my guy has earned the opportunity to take us in a different direction.

Because of the problems President Obama inherited, that direction includes massive short-term government spending. In the near future it may also include taking over failing financial institutions (like the infamous socialist Reagan did during the S&L crisis) and restructuring mortgages.

I didn’t like much of what the Bush administration did the last eight years. I suspect those who supported McCain and Bush won’t find much they like in the Obama administration.

The facts, however, are hard to avoid. The Bush administration added $5T to the national debt, started two wars, and left the country in the worst financial condition since Herbert Hoover. But when Democrats propose $800B to accelerate the recovery, Republicans call it “generational theft” and followed that up with a proposal for a $2.5T tax cut.

Rather than ideas, Republicans only have tired rhetoric – “tax-cuts are good” and “liberal/socialist spending is bad”. Their only plan for success requires President Obama to fail. Given the serious challenges facing this country that is a sad commentary.

So what is the kingdom of God’s promise? My understanding is that it is everything that we need to grow in our understanding of ourselves and him.

My sense of this moment in time is that the kingdom is going to be a new social paradigm.

For those who have been following some of my previous posts, the crisis that we are facing bears and eerie resemblance to the Fourth Turning predicted by some generational historians. If their theories are accurate, we will have to create a new social order to survive this crisis – the kingdom.

What is fascinating about this whole financial scenario is that it ultimately is the death knoll for the concept of self-regulating markets. What we are going to see now is whole new global regulatory structure which will enforce more conservative investment practices and prevent institutions from getting into the upside down position that they found themselves earlier this year.

The US will have less influence in this system than it had in the past because, among other things, we were the ones who promoted the strength of the unregulated market. Asia, Russia, and the Middle East have a bigger role in this new system because they are the winners in the current global economy.

The other casualty is the conservative fantasy of small government. The election this fall will only serve as evidence of something that most thoughtful people already know.

The era of conservative influence is over. When the conservatives running the government were staring down the barrel of the gun of global financial collapse, they abandoned their principles and embraced the biggest package of government socialism that we’ve ever seen. Our government has adopted a policy of nationalization of a significant portion of our financial infrastructure.

So when you begin to unravel this conservative fantasy, it leaves a lot exposed. The conservative/libertarian ethos is that an individual should be completely accountable for their own actions. They are solely responsible for their own success or failure. So by extension, if government just left everyone alone, defended the borders, and kept the peace – the marketplace would sort everything else out by rewarding the just and punishing the unjust.

What this crisis (and really the last eight years) has proven is that this philosophy no longer works in a globally connected economy. We are interconnected and co-dependent. Our attempt to go it alone, in one great last grasp for conservative greatness, has left us battered and weak.

The more cynical in the audience might take this a step further and suggest that those in power only used conservative principles to gain power. When it served their purposes, they were conservatives. When it was their own money on the line, they suddenly morphed almost overnight into liberals advocating big government socialism.

So where do we go from here?

What the Four Turnings researchers predict is that a new leader will emerge to help define this new social order. The old divisions will evaporate as we all realize that our collective survival requires a new identity.

My sense is that we need leadership which can embrace a new global role for both government and citizens. Our opportunity is to become leaders of this a new emerging globalism because our interdependencies and our problems can no longer be defined by our borders or our old ideologies.

Financial markets, global warning, stateless terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and continued conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq all require multi-national solutions. Our ability to be a leader in those solutions will depend on our ability to put our own internal differences aside and embrace this new globalism ourselves.

Our opportunity is to become a leader in forging new alliances to marginalize stateless terrorism by addressing the root causes that give it life.

Our opportunity is to become leader in building a new carbon-neutral economy.

Our opportunity is to embrace the real promise of the American dream for all those who are willing to work for it regardless of color, creed, birthplace, or sexual orientation.

We are going to need everyone in the boat pulling on the oars to raise our country out of the problems it is currently confronting. The good news is that we have a generation of young people eager to take on that role. The bad news is that in order to accept the kingdom that our Father is poised to provide to us, we have to be willing to give up our previous closely held beliefs about what it might look like.

When you vote in November, spend a little time evaluating which of the two men running has the vision to lead us to this new social order.