As the voters of Massachusetts decide whether to vote and whom to vote for on Tuesday, January19th, I am sure that there are statements on both sides to answer the call of History.  Frankly, I am pretty sick of hearing pseudo-Republicans like Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe say such things to explain their vote for the disaster aka Waxman-Markey or our relationship with our doctors.  Healthcare is the subject of similar invocations by the President, Speaker Pelosi and their policy wonk supporters.

Let me give you my personal take on the importance of history, one that I hope will go beyond the very true adage that those who forget it are doomed to repeat it.

Massachusetts is a special place.  I will never forget stopping to look at an old graveyard, on a back road in the Pelham Hills, when I studied at Amherst College.  Here were gravestones of veterans, not only of the Revolutionary War, but the French and Indian War.  Many were hardly legible due to weathering over two hundred years.  But just their presence told a story. Just being there said things like, ‘I came from England and made a new life here in what was wilderness, here, where I was free and my family had a future'.

Likewise, you cannot study in Cambridge or Boston long without noting the marker for where General Washington assembled Colonial troops, or Paul Revere's cooperage, or Faneuil Hall and the plaque to the Boston Massacre.  (As a lawyer, I always get great inspiration from realizing it was left to John Adams to defend the British soldiers who fired on the crowd that day, and how he got most of them off with a plea not to emotion, but to honor the Rule of Law.)

In 1776 and throughout the Revolutionary War, you could divide people into three camps: the revolutionaries, the Tories, and the fence sitters.  The revolutionaries fought for their rights of independence from dictation, as free Englishmen; they sought the Rule of Law that was not driven by personality of a King or his favorites.  The Tories were Royalists, a habit of mind they could not shake.  And the fence sitters were being cautious.  Please tell me who was listening to the call of History in those days?  Were not all three camps doing what they thought was right, at least for the most part?

So let's get to the nitty gritty: Massachusetts.  What this Senate election is about is exactly whether you want to live under a democracy of free people who respect the rule of law, or whether you will cede you birthright to the visionary planners like Obama, Pelosi, and Reid.  A free and fair market for Health care options is all that is needed to provide the future well being of this country; Republicans have more than one version of plans to reform insurance markets and allow people tax credits or other capability to obtain coverage and carry it with them through their lives.  What can we expect from the Democrat?  Well, just look at how they have arranged for the success so far of both Waxman-Markey and the takeover of the healthcare industry.

Payoffs and special favors.  That is the whole cynical story to date: Payoffs and special favors, whether it is carbon credits to big utilities or hundreds of millions in Medicaid relief to this or that state whose Senator is a more brazen prostitute than the average denizen of the "upper" chamber.

Moreover, one last note, as much from the study of economics as from "History":  Central planning of the life and well being of a nation does not work.  It never has and never will.  It did not work in the Soviet Union or in Germany, and it will not work here.  There are just too many things to weigh and think about that government cannot value or deal with properly.  That is why markets exist: to allow a means of judging real values.  While markets can be abused and need policing to be fair, who is going to police the policeman turned planner in chief?  Certainly not the Unions.  Certainly not big business (they fold really quick).  Certainly not you (unless you have a mega donation to give).

President Obama and his plan-crazy friends in the White House must be chortling royally after they swing every payoff and grant every favor to advance the healthcare takeover.  Why?  Because they know that in the end they will be in charge and when it comes time for the payoff down the road, the people who expect theirs will get a shaft and a smile. (Unless they represent millions who will vote mindlessly, like puppets.)

Massachusetts, it is poetic irony that it now is up to you.  You need apologize to no state or Party.  When you go to the polls, please remember the need for rule of law and reject the rule of men.  Vote for Scott Brown, and live to vote as free people for many another day. 

Mr. Sheldon is an attorney from Chicago. He went to Amherst College and Harvard Law School. This article is his personal opinion and is not on behalf of any firm or client.