You feel vaguely uncomfortable as you are placed in a darkened room in the Comfort Care wing of the hospital. In moments of lucidity, you wonder if you shouldn’t have some oxygen, an IV or SOMETHING! But the appropriate therapy, kidney dialysis, is not on the approved list of treatments for patients over 65, having been deemed too expensive. The new regulations from the Department of Health and Human Services were presented just last month to your hospital’s Futile Care Committee. It was decided at the highest levels that for those over 65 years of age, renal dialysis would not be a beneficial treatment, that the alternatives of a kidney transplant were too expensive, and that your quality of life on chronic dialysis would be too diminished.

Your children wonder why you are not in an ICU. They are told that you will be placed on a morphine drip to make you more comfortable as you pass away, and that this is the highest standard of care for your diagnosis and age. It is called terminal sedation. You signed an advanced directive indicating that you did not want extraordinary care for a terminal condition, and under the new protocols renal failure, although treatable, qualifies as a terminal condition.

Your children frantically try to find their old family doctor. But your health plan replaced him with a large group of younger physicians, the hospital’s Consortium for Health, a private-public foundation that was created to promote efficiency and reduce wasteful spending in medical care. By 2014 when he left, your family doctor was a dinosaur, having been trained in an earlier era. His medical school was one of the last to retain the original Hippocratic Oath. It affirmed the covenantal relationship between the physician and patient, overseen by God, and that whatever the physician did would be for the patient’s benefit. You had felt safe entrusting your health to Dr. O’Brien’s professional judgment.

Not only did the Hippocratic Oath your doctor took decades ago took specifically forbid physician assisted suicide and abortion, it also established patient confidentiality so that your secrets would never be disclosed. That is, until 2012, when physicians participating in the national healthcare system, which included ALL licensed physicians, were mandated to submit your visits to the unified electronic medical record system. This data base was created in 2003 to coordinate medical care, detect emerging health threats, and exchange clinical information. Your doctor was very uncomfortable with this policy despite reassurances that HIPAA regulations would maintain your privacy.

But forces beyond any individual’s control began to erode your relationship with your doctor long before he left the practice of medicine. The insurance companies stopped paying him in the late 1990’s for hospital care, preferring to hire “hospitalists” or “intensivists” for greater efficiency in reducing hospital stays. Since office visits were reimbursed at lower and lower rates, your doctor had to see more and more patients in the office to just stay even. So although O’Brien knew you well and was trained to treat conditions such as renal failure or pneumonia, he stopped treating patients in the hospital.

Around 2007 both the hospital and office physicians began to be paid by a formula that rewarded them for saving money on medical care. When your family doctor was forced to join the Consortium in 2012 because the health plans stopped contracting with individual physicians, a powerful new computer system tracked each doctor’s prescribing habits, referrals to specialists, and utilization of expensive lab tests. But your doctor was an “outlier” in this new system, having been brought up in Hippocratic tradition of doing what was necessary for the individual patient, rather than the Greater Good, the newer communitarian ethic followed by the younger doctors. He was financially penalized for doing too much for his patients, since the formulas based 30% of physician income on “efficiency.”

Your old doctor could tolerate the erosion of his income, but had trouble with the new regulations that insisted that he discuss and refer for “all legal procedures.” Since by 2013 physician assisted suicide was legal in 21 of 50 states, the Consortium enumerated the conditions that mandated the “euthanasia talk”, including multiple sclerosis, metastatic breast cancer, and many others. He could never actually bring himself to violate his original Hippocratic Oath that not only forbade assisting his patients in committing suicide but also prohibited even mentioning it. It was impossible to rid himself of the idea that a physician’s role was to assist in healing and that medical killing was antithetical to his professional integrity.

Back in 2007, ACOG, the ob/gyn’s professional organization, issued Ethics Committee Opinion 385, contending that ob/gyn doctors had the duty to either do abortions or have offices in close proximity to abortion doctors to whom they would refer patients. There was an outcry from professional organizations of pro-life ob/gyns, Catholic physicians, and other Christian doctors. Especially troubling to many was the assertion in Committee Opinion 385 that defined conscience as a sentiment, and measured its “authenticity” by the degree to which a provider would suffer “guilt, shame or loss of self esteem” if it were violated. Your doctor and many of his colleagues regarded medical killing as anathema, and were incensed by describing their integrity as a physicians as a “feeling”. But by 2013 the protests had died down, and the ethics committee recommendation for ob/gyn’s had evolved into a mandate for family practice doctors under new rules enforced by the Department of Health and Human Services.

The final blow came in early 2014. Back in 2008, in Benitez v North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group, the California Supreme Court ruled against ob/gyn doctors who did not want to provide intrauterine insemination to a lesbian couple because of their religious beliefs. Although most European nations did not allow the buying or selling of eggs or sperm, and restricted fertility therapies to heterosexual married couples, the California courts not only permitted but required health care providers to cooperate in any reproductive therapies for any patient regardless of sexual orientation or marital status.

Although the birth of octuplets in 2009 with assisted reproductive technology to a single woman with six other children initially created a brief public uproar, ultimately no legislation was passed protecting physicians who did not want to participate in a patient’s procreative endeavor. Your physician had a 68 year old bipolar single male patient who wanted to have an heir. The patient requested that your doctor appeal to the Consortium to provide him with a donated egg and surrogate mother for his desired offspring. Since your doctor did not want to be used as a tool in his patient’s peculiar agenda and was legitimately afraid of an expensive lawsuit that would decimate his dwindling retirement funds if he refused, he decided at this point to quit medicine altogether and move to a sunny warm state.

Your family doctor had been inspired as a young man by study of the U.S. Constitution and other foundational documents that he thought would forever ensure his liberty. He had studied the same “Rules of Civility” that the young George Washington had encountered in 1747. One of the most memorable of these maxims was “Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.” It was clear to him that conscience here referred to man’s innate understanding of moral right and wrong. When the American Founders would later declare independence from Great Britain in 1776, it was by virtue of this “spark of celestial fire” that they would establish the principles of human equality, unalienable rights, and government by consent as the foundations of American constitutional government.

Just before he left for his retirement home, your doctor was deeply disturbed to see the concept of conscience mocked in the New England Journal of Medicine by University of Wisconsin law professor R. Alta Charo in her article “The Celestial Fire of Conscience – Refusing to Provide Medical Care.” Charo’s presentation did not acknowledge that many Americans do not believe that abortion, assisted suicide, and embryonic stem cell therapies are legitimate medical care in the first place. Her article also did not distinguish between emergency and elective care, and merely regards the health care provider as a tool for whatever ends the patient wants to achieve. Attorneys such as Ms. Charo claimed the right to take whatever cases they want, but seem deny the same basic right to physicians. Patients can always seek the care of other providers.

Your doctor (and many other Americans) believed that failure to protect physician conscience will destroy the trust and accountability that is essential to the physician patient relationship. If the physician and patient cannot freely collaborate, ultimately another agenda — that of the health plan or state — will replace it, to everyone’s detriment.

We suggest that you start in your own homes. Talk to your family about the Values and Principles. Discuss the importance of what the Founders designed for America.

Hold or attend a weekly meeting in your neighborhood or town. Communication with your neighbors is vital to the process of protecting our country. Gather in living rooms, coffee houses or restaurants. Share your thoughts and ideas.

Visit this website often. Make use of the resources that are linked here. Share the ideas and resources that have worked in your home or town.

This is a non-political movement. The 9-12 Project is designed to bring us all back to the place we were on September 12, 2001. The day after America was attacked we were not obsessed with Red States, Blue States or political parties. We were united as Americans, standing together to protect the greatest nation ever created.

That same feeling – that commitment to country is what we are hoping to foster with this idea. We want to get everyone thinking like it is September 12th, 2001 again.

Ask yourself these questions:

Do you watch the direction that America is being taken in and feel powerless to stop it?
Do you believe that your voice isn’t loud enough to be heard above the noise anymore?
Do you read the headlines everyday and feel an empty pit in your stomach…as if you’re completely alone?
If you’ve answered YES, then you’ve fallen for the Wizard of Oz lie. While the voices you hear in the distance may sound intimidating, as if they surround us from all sides—the reality is very different. Once you pull back the curtain, you realize that there are only a few people pressing the buttons, and their voices are weak. The truth is that they don’t surround us at all.

We surround them.

At the origin of America, our Founding Fathers built this country on 28 powerful principles. These principles were culled from all over the world and from centuries of great thinkers. We have distilled the original 28 down to the 9 basic principles.

So, how do we show America what’s really behind the curtain? Read the nine simple principles. If you believe in at least seven of them, then we have something in common.

9 Principles
1. America Is Good.

2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
God “The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the external rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.” from George Washington’s first Inaugural address.

3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
Honesty “I hope that I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider to be the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.” George Washington

4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
Marriage/Family “It is in the love of one’s family only that heartfelt happiness is know. By a law of our nature, we cannot be happy without the endearing connections of a family.” Thomas Jefferson

5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
Justice “I deem one of the essential principles of our government… equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political.” Thomas Jefferson

6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
Life, Liberty, & The Pursuit of Happiness “Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely to give him comfortable subsistence.” Thomas Jefferson

7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
Charity “It is not everyone who asketh that deserveth charity; all however, are worth of the inquiry or the deserving may suffer.” George Washington

8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
On your right to disagree “In a free and republican government, you cannot restrain the voice of the multitude; every man will speak as he thinks, or more properly without thinking.” George Washington

9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

I’m tired of being told that I have to “spread the wealth around” to people who don’t have my work ethic. I’m tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy or stupid to earn it.

I’m tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to “keep people in their homes.” Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I’m willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the leftwing Congresscritters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them—with their own money.

I’m tired of being told how bad America is by leftwing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the religious freedom and women’s rights of Saudi Arabia, the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Gay people of Iran, and the freedom of speech of Venezuela. Won’t multiculturalism be beautiful?

I’m tired of being told that Islam is a “Religion of Peace,” when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family “honor;” of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren’t “believers;” of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for “adultery;” of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur’an and Shari’a law tells them to.

I believe “a man should be judged by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin.” I’m tired of being told that “race doesn’t matter” in the post-racial world of President Obama, when it’s all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of US Senators from Illinois. I think it’s very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the emancipation proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less in an all-knowing government.

I’m tired of a news media that thinks Bush’s fundraising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but that think Obama’s, at triple the cost, were wonderful. That thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control weight and stress, that picked over every line of Bush’s military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his, that slammed Palin with two years as governor for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever.

Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News? Get a clue. I didn’t vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry drove me to his camp in 2004.

I’m tired of being told that out of “tolerance for other cultures” we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America, while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance.

I’m tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore’s, and if you’re greener than Gore, you’re green enough.

I’m tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don’t think Gay people choose to be Gay, but I damn sure think druggies chose to take drugs. And I’m tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana.

I’m tired of illegal aliens being called “undocumented workers,” especially the ones who aren’t working, but are living on welfare or crime. What’s next? Calling drug dealers, “Undocumented Pharmacists”? And, no, I’m not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic and it’s been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I’m willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person who can speak English, doesn’t have a criminal record and who is self-supporting without family on welfare, or who serves honorably for three years in our military. Those are the citizens we need.

I’m tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad mouth better people then themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years—and still are? Not even close. So here’s the deal. I’ll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims who tortured and beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we’ll compare notes. British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in fear.

I’m tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers—bums are bi-partisan. And I’m tired of people telling me we need bi-partisanship. I live in Illinois, where the “Illinois Combine” of Democrats and Republicans has worked together harmoniously to loot the public for years. And I notice that the tax cheats in Obama’s cabinet are bi-partisan as well.

I’m tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I’m tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.

Speaking of poor, I’m tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn’t have that in 1970, but we didn’t know we were “poor.” The poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the dollars flowing.

I’m real tired of people who don’t take responsibility for their lives and actions. I’m tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination, or big-whatever for their problems.