Yostivanich

But the bill does not erect a huge New Deal-Great Society-style gov­ern­ment pro­gram. In lieu of a pub­lic option, it deliv­ers 32 mil­lion newly insured Amer­i­cans to pri­vate insur­ers. As no less a con­ser­v­a­tive author­ity than The Wall Street Jour­nal edi­to­r­ial page observed last week, the bill’s pro­to­type is the health care leg­is­la­tion Mitt Rom­ney signed into law in Mass­a­chu­setts. It con­tains what used to be con­sid­ered Repub­li­can ideas.

But the expla­na­tion is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national exis­ten­tial reorder­ing that roiled Amer­ica in 1964.

via Op-Ed Colum­nist — The Rage Is Not About Health Care — NYTimes.com. Frank Rich on the recent health care bill pas­sage and the sim­i­lar­ity between that and other bills that changed society.