"History Calls"

Olympia Snowe, the sole Republican on the Senate Finance Committee to vote for the health care bill, said of the bill she just voted for: "Is this bill all that I would want? Is it all that it can be? No. But when history calls, history calls."

It is a telling comment and speaks to the type of political leader who wants to "make history" rather than good policy.

In its more extreme manifestation, such sentiments lay behind other "monument builders" in history. The pharaohs of Egypt used tens of thousands of slaves and vast resources to build the pyramids, gigantic tombs to house pharaoh after death. Adolph Hitler dreamed of a "1,000 year Reich" and sought his vision through conquest and genocide. The Soviet Union had its succession of five-year plans, slaughtering millions in the process but sending men into space.

Of course, the health care legislation in Congress isn't likely to reach those levels of human suffering as part of its efforts to satisfy the dreams of its advocates, but it is a democratic version of the same principle: pursuing one's vision of society at the expense of individual rights and freedom.

Thanks to Olympia Snowe's desire to respond to "history's call", we know where she stands.