BURN: Birdcage Brooks...Wrong, As Usual

David Brooks

For the Democrats, expanding health care coverage is an emotional hot spot. Over the past year, Democrats have fought passionately for universal coverage. They have fought for it even while the country is more concerned about the economy, and in the face of serial political defeats. They have fought for it even though it has crowded out other items on their agenda and may even cost them their majority in the House.

And they’ve done it for almost no votes. The 30 million who would be covered under the Democratic proposals are not big voters, while the millions who would pay for the coverage are strikingly unhappy.

There is something morally impressive in the Democrats’ passion on this issue. At the same time, it’s interesting to compare it to their behavior on other issues in which they have no emotional investment.

There is something intellectually...and morally...astounding about Brooks' take in his ramblings. He simply does not, and will not, get it.

This is not about the collectivist's "emotional investment". As events amply demonstrate, these are not people acting out of "emotion". The health-care take-over the collective has been attempting is a saga of crass, cynical power, focused on a fundamental revolutionary goal. That goal, over which they are so willing to spill so much of their own political life-blood, is the extension of federal control over the daily lives of Americans.

Brooks suggests this is about an altruistic spasm, emanating from deep in the bleeding heart of liberalism. It is so powerful, he offers, that it drives them to commit political acts that are suicidal, and all for "almost no votes". This is silly.

For one thing, votes don't matter here. Even politics don't matter here in any conventional sense, as even Mr. Brooks can discern.

The health-care push is about revolution. It is all about raw, intrusive power, hitting Americans literally where they live. And how they live. And even IF they live. It is, essentially, about "remaking America", and remaking Americans...at least those who will hold still for it.

Nobody who is not a cell of the collective can look at the catalog of astounding abuse of the political process (to say nothing of logic), the contempt for the will of the American people (think how often we've heard lately we're too stupid to appreciate ObamaCare), the sordidness of House and Senate "leadership", and the obvious corruption emanating from the White House down. This is not the stuff of a "moral" crusade, as Brooks suggests. Rather, this stinking cesspool of power-grubbing tells us volumes about the nature of what is being done here.

Assuming that health-care is in the particular dire straits we are told by THE ONE that it is, could a principled liberal not suggest fixes that do not involve sending Americans to jail? Could they suggest a fix that would not involve the federalization of our personal health information? Could they suggest a fix that did not destroy the insurance industry, converting it into a fascist corporatist collective, controlled by the central government and its bureaucrats? IF this were the emergency we have been told it is, why is the plan only going to be effective in the lives of people years down the road?

Indeed, a principled liberal could suggest other, effective, and less expensive fixes, and some have. So have conservatives and others. They were ignored. Fixing problems was never the goal.

David Brooks is patently WRONG about his "emotional" and "impressively moral" collectivists. But why am I saying there is something morally askew about his piece? Couldn't he be wrong without being immoral? Sure. But he is is putatively a smart man. He is nominally a conservative, according to himself. I assert it is morally wrong to volunteer to be stupid, to choose to ignore reality. I assert it is far MORE wrong to put such nonsense as Birdcage Brooks prints before people who may be influenced by it.