Yesterday, I attended the Kill the Bill rally on the Hill. I decided that if this bill is going to pass, I was going to fight it as much as I could.

For a blogger, I really don’t know what to write. Anything I say will be construed as hyperbole by my liberal readers and now sadly, former friends.

I’ve been at this political blogging for long time now. I’ve written many an impassioned blog post and advocated for and against many bills. Something about health care is different. At this point, the brutal and horrible debate has cost two friendships. A fellow conservative friend agreed that this is a different fight and commented that it’s personal.  I’ve never encountered something like this before.

My opposition to this bill goes far beyond party lines. On this fight, the personal is political.

In August of 2004, I was a senior at the University of Tennessee. I remember walking towards Dunford Hall, where I worked for the campus IT department when I realized my phone was on silent. I had seven missed calls from my mom. Immediately, I called her back. The news was devastating. My grandfather had cancer.

Like most men of his generation, he was a veteran and depended on the VA for his health care. For more than a year, he had repeatedly gone to the VA with stomach pains. He kept getting prescriptions for antacids and sent home. After my grandmother insisted, he visited a private physician. The news was bad. He had colon cancer. The same disease that killed his mother, my great-grandmother, back in the 70s.

Colon cancer is treatable if caught early. My grandfather did what he was supposed to do and went to the doctor when symptoms started. Even though he had a family history of cancer, no one ordered a colonoscopy. No one had investigated it more. After fighting it for several years, he passed away in January 2007, a small, fragile shell of the tanned construction worker that I try to remember.

That, my friends, is the treatment we’re going to get in the near future. If our government can’t even provide adequate treatment to the brave men and women who fought for our country, there’s not much hope for us.

Health care also crosses a philosophical line for me.

This isn’t socialism, but it opens the door towards socialism. Yesterday, Rep. Michele Bachmann said that this bill will put 50% of private companies under the thumb of the government. That is unacceptable.

I realize that I’ll lose many of you here. This battle over health care gets down to fundamental differences between the two warring political philosophies. Conservatives, or more accurately classical liberals, believe that freedom is fragile. In order to protect it, the individual must be stronger than the government. Yes, people fall through the cracks. It’s unfortunate and no political system is perfect.

Which is where churches have failed. As a Christian, I believe that we should help our fellow men, and I do what I can. Since churches weren’t doing a good job of taking care of the community, government created entitlement programs. Suddenly American liberals or progressives, who directly come from socialist movements in the United States, had a moral platform. They put conservatives to shame. We weren’t doing our job, and taxpayers have been suffering since then.

Then there’s the gross violation of our Constitutional rights.

I love grassroots politics. It’s why I love the Internet. Small groups of people are able to organize without much cost or hassle and can multiply their voices to influence government. Or that’s the theory.

It hasn’t worked that way in the health care fight. I’ve watched as liberals I know, Christian liberals, have scoffed at “Tea baggers” and insulted them. There is nothing wrong with protesting and gathering to fight a bill that you oppose. That’s about as American as it gets.

But not to this government or current Democrats.

Obama and Democratic leadership have responded to our concerns with arrogance. When we object, we’re shushed and told, “it will save money.” That’s what has bothered me the most: the arrogance that these people know better!

We have rights to object and question the actions of our elected officials. That’s what makes this country a democracy. The fact that thousands of people have repeatedly dropped everything and driven all night on their own dime is astounding. These aren’t lemmings who blindly listen to Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh. These are people concerned about the future of our country and our spending. The failure to recognize that is the height of arrogance, and those who have shown those behaviors will be job hunting come November.

We do need health care reform in this country, but this is bad bill. If Democrats can’t realize that, they deserve to lose in 2010.