Just Leave Me Alone - The Patriot Post

It’s not going well for fans of ObamaCare. For example, when former Obama campaign manager David Axelrod blames the insurance companies for not warning people they would lose their coverage, a video compilation of Obama repeatedly telling people they could keep it reveals what a pathetic toady Axelrod really is. And that compilation only covers the years 2008-2010. During the 2012 presidential debate, Obama was at it again, followed by another encore as late as Sept. 25, 2013. And finally for David and all of his equally duplicitous progressive pals, here’s what was posted yesterday on the Whitehouse.gov website: "If you like your plan you can keep it and you don’t have to change a thing due to the health care law.“

Americans can take that last revelation one of two ways. Either the failure to remove that utterly damning sentence from the website exemplifies the mind-numbling incompetence of the Obama administration, or the president and his minions are arrogant enough to believe they are completely immune from any consequences associated with their lying.

Bet your life on number two because it fits a rather stunning pattern: despite all the scandals that have besieged this administration, from Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS’s targeting of conservatives, and the DOJ’s targeting of reporters, to the utterly disastrous rollout of the healthcare bill, not a single person has been fired. And they haven’t been fired because, despite all of their obvious shortcomings, they remain faithful foot soldiers willing to impose progressive ideology – by any means necessary.

I’m reviewing all of this because it leads directly to the topic I wish to discuss today. It is an idea that embraces the essence of our American birthright, even as it is utterly inimical to that progressive agenda.

I want government to leave me alone.

That doesn’t mean I want no government at all, which is the reflexive assumption that progressives make whenever someone expresses such a sentiment. It means I don’t want legions of self-aggrandizing bureaucratic do-gooders figuring out more and more ways to encroach on my liberty. I don’t want an insurance policy with maternity coverage shoved down my throat. I don’t want my pancake breakfast banned because it contains trans fats. I don’t want a camera at every intersection, a black box installed in my car so government can tax me based on the number of miles I drive, or streetlights capable of audio and video recording. I don’t want America’s children brainwashed by a Common Core curriculum that tells them "an individual’s wants are less important than the nation’s well-being,” or that “government officials’ commands must be obeyed by all.” And most of all, I don’t want to believe that such ideas are embraced by a majority of Americans.

But I wouldn’t bet against it.

Nearly a year ago, I read this column published by the American Thinker and it has stayed with me ever since. It was about a guy who discovered 30 year old textbooks in the back of a classroom he was covering as a substitute teacher. “As I flipped through the pages, I was astonished to find what I would now consider an upper-level college textbook … (that) contained a very detailed understanding of political theory, constitutional law, macroeconomics, American history, and comparative political systems,” wrote author Glenn Fairman. “I spent the rest of the day in slack-jawed amazement, perusing what a student in a working-class town was expected to know before the mavens of education began tinkering with the curricula of our schools.”

That tinkering is only half the picture. How do you teach kids about wanting to be left alone for liberty’s sake, when thousands of them are being forced to wear RFID chips that monitor their every move at school, or jackboot educrats are scanning their irises without parental permission? And how do you explain to the legions of Americans of all ages who are addicted to an iPhone, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Internet, look-at-me universe, that such cravings are the shallowest of diversions, and totally irrelevant to what’s truly important?

You probably can’t, until the evidence that we are committing cultural suicide becomes overwhelming.

In a crazy way, maybe ObamaCare is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. The outright and despicable mendacity used to pass it, coupled with the colossal failure of oh-so-revered technology, has awakened millions of newly insurance-deprived Americans out of a largely self-inflicted torpor. This isn’t Benghazi or Fast and Furious, or any other “far away” scandal. This is personal. You had insurance, and you couldn’t keep it. You had what you wanted, and Obama and his cheerleaders have been reduced to calling what you wanted “junk,” “garbage” or “sub-par” to cover up their failures. You had a modicum of liberty, and the Democrats took it away – for your own good.

And now that ObamaCare is turning into a fiasco, everyone of these liars, right up thorough the Oval Office, is busy embracing another quintessential reality that plagues our culture: they are attempting to blame anyone but themselves for their own failures. First it was Republican "sabotage.“ Currently it's ”bad apple“ insurance companies. Soon it will be the same "amputation-happy” doctors Obama lied about back in 2009, when he said many of them preferred making $30,000 to $50,000 for cutting off a diabetic’s foot than the pittance they would make for preventing diabetes in the first place.

Even Obama’s so-called apology embraces this dynamic. He’s sorry that Americans who lost their health insurance “are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me." Wrong, Mr. President. People aren’t "finding” themselves in a situation. You put them in that situation by telling a bald-faced lie. One without which ObamaCare – along with your chances of getting reelected – would have more than likely crashed and burned.

There was another part of that apology that should infuriate Americans as well. It was the part where Obama further absolved himself with the lame excuse that his lie affected only a “small percentage of folks who may be disadvantaged.” Such a phrase is is classic progressivism, and the most classic embodiment of it is attributable to New York Times columnist Walter Duranty, whose shameless apologies for Soviet thug Joseph Stalin earned him a Pulitzer Prize. When the atrocities of one of the world’s most prolific murderers were brought to light, Duranty continuously excused them. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,” he would say.

So how many “eggs” is ObamaCare breaking? As “few” as 51 million, according to McClatchy, a media outfit with a decidedly leftist slant. According to Forbes Magazine’s Roy Avik, who’s not in the tank for the president? “As to the number of people facing cancellations, 51 percent of the employer-based market plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market … amounts to 93 million Americans,” he explains.

Ninety three millions eggs, comprising almost a third of the entire nation, makes one helluva large omelet. Maybe one large enough to get the public to re-embrace the idea that being left alone is the cornerstone of liberty.

The Patriot Post® · Just Leave Me Alone