Witness, for instance, the “civilized” fascism of the contemporary Democrat party, which is couching its totalitarian designs in the false nobility and unearned moral authority of sleazy elected officials and their army of appointed, faceless, bureaucratic lifers.
What they believe — and so are determined to act upon — is real, and it is the very essence of liberal fascism. What we are engaging in isn’t some mere set of “policy disagreements” within a completely workaday status quo DC, as some on the “right” — wishing to sound more reasoned than we Hobbits, extremists, anarchists, and domestic terrorists (read: constitutionalists) who have seen Obama and the New Left takeover of the Democrat Party for exactly what it is — have long maintained. Holding on to that position at this point, in fact, is nothing more than knee-jerk recalcitrance and should be treated as a complete surrender to the manufactured reality of the left, and the complete triumph of stubborn egoism over empiricism (Obama never was a “garden-variety liberal Democrat,” nor was he ever a “good man” who merely differed with the right on the best policies for America; instead, he is, and always has been, a revolutionary, a destroyer, someone whose entire life was constructed and molded to place him in a position to foist a progressive, Fabian Socialist, quasi-Marxist coup on our very system of governance by pressuring and breaching the Constitution, by challenging or ignoring separation of powers, and by turning the Executive branch and its administrative state into the ultimate governing authority, with the President as the supreme leader. He is, by way of Marx, Alinsky, Ayers, Cloward-Piven, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and LBJ, a Manchurian candidate with a nice pant crease and the cover of being an Historic figure in a country taught self-loathing over racial animus long ago atoned for, in ways large and small).
The mask has been off for some time now. So the sub rosa socialism — which was the strategy developed back during Obama’s days at Cooper Union’s Marxism conferences — has slowly become more brazen, with the attendant attempt to continue to normalize that presumptuousness so that it seems in keeping with traditional American ideals.
But one has to be willing to overlook so many things to buy into this fiction that those who do can, with confidence, be broken down into either useful idiots or complicit actors in an attempt at “fundamental transformation” — or, if you prefer, the remaking of our system of governance, a velvet revolution, a coup.
And here it is articulated, clearly and almost matter-of-factly, by Howard Dean, speaking on the roles of the private sector and the government in the arena of health insurance:
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a liberal Democrat, says decisions about health care should rest with the federal government, not with individual employers who pay for their workers’ health insurance.
“So, you know, this is one country,” Dean told CNN’s “State of the Union” with Candy Crowley on Sunday. “We all have to live by a set of things that are passed in Washington and agreed to by the court. We’ll see what the court does, but I don’t think a particular employer has a right to decide what kind of health care their employees are going to get. That’s now in the hands of the federal government, and that’s where it should be.”
Let that sink in for a second: the dispersed and varied choice that occurs when private employers offer health care packages to their employees — which employees are free to factor in those proffered coverages as part of the calculus for deciding upon which job to take — is, to the left’s way of thinking, illegitimate: choice, competition, private contracts, variety of coverages, all of these things, we’re told, can’t rest with private enterprises buying them and then providing them to their employees.
Instead, those decisions are all “now in the hands of the federal government, and,” according to Dean and the left, “that’s where it should be.”
The question not asked, during such propaganda pitches, is this: why should these decisions be in hands of elected officials and bureaucrats and not those who are paying for the coverages, offering the benefit packages, and allowing potential employees to weigh those plans into the overall compensation packages being offered, thereby creating competition between companies for employees, which in turn drives up wages and allows for choice and, yes, individual liberty?
And the answer — though not explicitly stated — is buried in the implied assumption that, where private enterprises and their profit-seeking are somehow crass and immoral, the government, made up as it is of smiling hairpieces who excel at making promises they have no intention of fulfilling and telling constituencies what they wish to hear, then ignoring them once they go to DC, is entirely noble, virtuous, and moral, and as a result, has the best interests of the people in mind, evinced by their willingness to make the dull rubes who don’t know what’s best for them bend to an unpopular mandate that drives up the cost of care, redistributes wealth, destroys the middle class, decreases the efficacy of our health care system, drives doctors out of business, and (the kicker) only applies to those who are under the purview of this social experiment, with the virtuous government leadership exempting themselves from their own grand designs.
Or, to put it another way: the company that takes you on, trains you, gives you a job, a career, a livelihood, and room for advancement — all while providing you with a health care plan that you’ve determined fits within the elaborate calculus of your individual choices and decisions — is evil and incapable of doing right by you. Whereas Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi? These are the people who really know and care about you.
Which, when we distill it like that, can there be any narrative more absurd than that one?
Government isn’t your Nanny. It’s isn’t your surrogate parent. It isn’t meant to take care of you from cradle to grave. It’s design is to uphold and protect the Constitution, to secure what are your natural rights, and to provide for the common defense. It is the rule of law that keeps the civil society adequately refereed — not the rogue head coach who, once hired on a temporary basis, can change the rules of the game.
There is nothing inherently moral about a government employee or elected official. Just as there is nothing inherently evil about profit-driven innovation and expansion, which creates wealth and opportunity.
This is a lesson we need to learn, in New Hampshire, and South Carolina, and Oklahoma, and Arizona, and North Dakota, and New Mexico. In California, and Texas, and New York. In South Dakota, and Oregon, and Washington, and Michigan, and then in Washington DC to take back the White House. YEAAAARRRRRGGGHH!
Did you see the paws on Candy? She’s gotta have the widest-mouth cookie jar of any bootlicker on the planet.
UnitedHealthcare Dropping Hundreds Of Doctors From Medicare Advantage Plans
Jeff, if I may – I wrote this a while back – http://blog.robballen.com/Post/2114/tyranny-in-red-tights – and it keeps looking more and more prescient as the years tick by.
They can sell you the devil, but they’ll dress him in a nice suit and tell you he’s gay. Who can fight against a well dressed gay man without being a bigoted jesusclinger?
This is a plan long in the making, slow in the execution, and covering every possible outcome.
The LIVs will hear “employers” and stop listening. Dean’s real meaning is this:
I don’t think a particular [person] has a right to decide what kind of health care [he or she is] going to get. That’s now in the hands of the federal government, and that’s where it should be.
In other words, you’ll take your poultice of buffalo dung and like it or be hounded by the IRS until you die of stress.
“This idea that we can all pick and choose what we’re going to do is a tough idea.”
…called “Liberty” you nasty little fascist.
jentherube chimes
Potemkincare
Ah, but Obama is the old savior whose feet are now seen to be made of clay.
Sen. Warren, in the running for new messiah, will finally do socialism right, for sure, this time, and you can take that to the, oh so hated, bank.
So “healthcare.gov” is a new improved version of the Nigerian email scam? Phish-care.
It’s funny (odd, if not exactly humorous) where “populist” is equivocated with that which has to be jammed down the popular throat as the popular throat bellows in dissent.
Two thoughts:
I’m not so sure that it’s positioning, so much as they happen to have already surrendered to the manufactured reality, and hope to take it over. Hence the reasonable people can disagree reasonably with their friends across the aisle schtick of a certain senescent past Republican presidential nominee misrepresenting the people of a southwest state.
So I wouldn’t treat it as surrender. Seems to me more like collaboration of the Quisling/Vichy-ite sort.
Also, and picking up where Shermlaw left off regarding Howard Dean, that’s as clear a statement as any of democracy’s drift into servility to the state. We’re all either victims or potential victims (unless we’re one of the victimizers of poor disabled female minority mothers of orphan children in a same-sex relationship* –you aren’t are you?) in need of a maternalistic** state to cure what ails us.
“[Democracy] has come to serve simply as a description of the therapeutic state[,]” Christoper Lasch wrote.
Now, I wouldn’t want anyone, hellomynameissteveandiamamalignantdwarf, for example, to wonder what a Christopher Lasch quote from 1995 about political correctness has to do with
FatherMother(Government) Knows Best health care reform. So I’ll try to be clear. This is how the Left intends to progress towards dealing with those “tough realities” Lasch wrote of. Now that they’ve filled heads with their gaseous bromides, they’re going to “ease your burdens” so to speak, by taking those weighty health care decisions off of your back and make them for you. Because, like the man said, freedom is slavery.And you want to be free, don’t you?
*did I miss any victim group there?
**paternalism doesn’t seem to cover it any more, does it? Somebody needs to come up with a metaphor along the lines of the stereotypical overbearing jewish mother to describe the state’s interference. But don’t ask me to do it. That would be the bad kind of anti-semitism. (Maybe the stereotypical overbearing Isreali mother?)
“Somebody needs to come up with a metaphor along the lines of the stereotypical overbearing jewish mother to describe the state’s interference. ”
Animal husbandry with a hint of work dog training thrown in.
Anyone watch C-Span this morning? There was a meeting to discuss the limits to presidential powers and the remedies thereto. Guests/expert witnesses included Jonathan Turley (Impeachment), Mr. Rosencrantz (Impeachment), guy from CATO (Impeachment), Simon Lazarus (Hamana, hamana, hamana) and another fence-sitter from GWU-Law.
Trey Gowdy was the chair and gave Sheila Jackson Lee a right bitch-slapping on the record and refused to let her continue her disingenuous rant. “Submit it” he said.
Good times.
They are less the working dogs and more like the cargo cult version which imitates the form without any awareness of substance. Look Bunnies!!!
I do like Lasch’s therapeutic state.
Mostly because it evokes an image of the Democrat Party as a carnival of medicine show quacks.
Fascinating. Dr. Dean believes that health care is a right to be bestowed by government. I guess Dr. Dean thinks he will be able to avoid being a slave to the unwashed masses, because of his political connections. Dr. Dean is in for a rude awakening, once he finds out the political connections also mean first in line for the firing squad, once he’s no longer politically useful.
ruining class news
Boehner Hires McCain’s Amnesty Captain to Handle Immigration
What a fucking lunatic.
I’m going to assert my right to Howlin’ Howie’s house, car and bank account.
Hey, I need this to pay for my Obamacare, Howie. Why do you hate the downtrodden?
ruining class news
CANTOR RELENTLESS IN PUSH FOR AMNESTY FOR ILLEGAL ALIEN YOUTH
If the government was inherently moral, government workers would not need unions.
When an actual parent says “I brought you into this world, I can take you out again,” odds are they are kidding.
History indicates that when the National Parent says so, it’s not so funny.
We don’t really have a good historical precedent for going from exactly where we were to that, but if you fudge a few factors it starts to look really ugly.
The Classical Liberal Constitution
Liberal law prof: Obama’s unconstitutional power grabs are creating a “very dangerous and unstable system”
For the left, chaos is always seen as their friend. An ally in the quest for power over all.
Welcome to Cuba Comrade!
OBAMA: “We’re not going back” (to that horrible time when 87% of Americans were happy with their health insurance).
It’s like he can’t hear what he sounds like anymore.
Five years in and Peggy is starting to smell a whiff of dumb.
http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/2013/12/03/low-information-leadership/
http://www.gallup.com/poll/166094/young-americans-least-familiar-healthcare-law.aspx
But they love it and voted for it!
https://today.yougov.com/news/2013/12/02/hillary-clintons-ratings-underwater/
But… but she’s INEVITABLE!!!!!
Great post, jg.
Oh, this has probably already been linked, but I’ve been working ‘specially hard lately. Gotta keep feeding the President Food Stamp’s voters, y’know.
Expert Testifies to Congress that Obama’s ‘Ignoring Laws’ Could Lead to Overthrow of Government
The cowering, self-fulfilling stupidity laced throughout that House Judiciary Committee hearing — and throughout the ‘analytic’ commentary about the hearing in talk shows — has been another sad revelation of the absence of any generally meaningful understanding of the United States Constitution in the United States. Such an absence can only be heartwarming to the progressives who desire nothing less than the disappearance of the constraints the Constitution stands for. It’s a pitifully corrupt country we’ve got here, from which nothing genuinely good can be expected. So brace for the bad.
prepping the way for the new improved “Great Red Hope” Lizzy Warren.
Lizzy Warren took an axe,
Gave the ‘tu-shun forty whacks.
Got such a thrill from what she’d done,
She gave all freedom forty-one.
Oh I don’t know. I figure maybe the Stuarts or the Bourbons might benefit from the restoration of Divine Right Monarchy that’s almost sure to come.
Scratch that. It’ll be the Hapsburgs that win out.
Reunification and expansion of the domains of Charles V, baby! Look for it!