“The end justifies the means” is an unstated rationale that guides much liberal thinking and rationalizes immoral behavior in service to a supposedly greater good. But a column I’ve just read stretches this twisted ethical calculus to a new level.

Columnist Michael Cohen, in an op-ed for the New York Daily News, tells us, essentially, that President Obama’s lie that people could keep their health care plans if they liked them is not just defensible – because it was in service to the greater good of imposing Obamacare on an otherwise unwilling populace – but darn near laudable.

Obama is to be praised for having the courage to deceive us because we are not enlightened enough to know what is in our best interests. The headline of the column is “Behind Obama’s lie, our own immaturity.” The subhead digs the knife in further: “We can’t handle the truth.”

Where would we be without the superior wisdom of liberals and their altruistic willingness to engage in fraudulent coercion to speed us along the evolutionary food chain?

After conceding that Obama uttered this lie at least 34 times, Cohen admonishes us that “before we fully castigate the President for his rhetorical flights of fancy, it’s important to keep in mind that Obama was – to a large degree – telling Americans what they wanted to hear. In fact, he was giving them the type of comforting assurances they insist upon getting before backing any major policy change from Washington.”

Well then, by all means, all praise to Barack, the benevolent deceiver in chief, for his comforting assurances. Though Americans may not be fully aware of it, deep down they want their leaders to trick them with promises of better things because otherwise, they would never have the sense to embrace the far-reaching reforms that only liberal academics and community organizers fully comprehend.

Cohen goes on to argue that though Obamacare “is the most far-reaching piece of social policy since the Great Society … most Americans are largely unaffected by it.” And “this was not accidental.” No, the plan was “minimally invasive,” because “politicians knew Americans would never go along with reform if they saw it as something that would disrupt their own lives.”

Let’s unpack this a bit, shall we?

In the first place, Obama’s assurance wasn’t just an innocuous case of over-promising or a “rhetorical flight of fancy.” We now know that when Obama made the promise, he was fully aware that as many as 93 million people could lose their plans.

Is that an insignificant number – “minimally invasive”? If so, then how do you explain Obama’s obsession with overhauling our entire health care system even though only 10 million Americans were falling through the cracks with the existing system, not 48 million as he repeatedly claimed – his first big Obamacare lie?

So, is Cohen telling us that 93 million is an insignificant number but 10 million is not? No, he’s adopting another Obama lie that only 5 percent of the population – not 93 million, which would be closer to 27 percent – is being affected by his “you can keep it” lie.

OK, for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s only 5 percent. The Obama/Cohen logic is that it’s just a rounding error when an oppressive government forces 5 percent of Americans out of their health care plans. But for the sake of 3 percent of Americans, who could have been subsidized for a fraction of the cost of Obamacare, Obama was hellbent on the government’s absorbing the world’s greatest health care system.

Don’t fret over this inconsistency. As long as the statist football is being advanced, all is copacetic.

But as we can already see, even the more realistic 93 million figure doesn’t paint the whole picture. Obamacare is introducing such chaos that the entire system is almost certain to break down, which will lead, they hope, to a single-payer plan.

But wait. Obama has repeatedly told us he is not angling for single-payer, even though he is on record advocating it and nothing exists in his resume to suggest he’s changed his mind.

We can trust Obama, can’t we? No? No big deal. Our ministers of truth have revealed to us that trust and credibility don’t matter in our postmodern world. What matters is that Obama is looking out for our best interests and that he knows better than we ever could what those interests are. So let’s hope he is lying to us about single-payer, too, because we’ll end up better off for his lie.

In fact, I’m almost getting giddy contemplating all the other benefits that will accrue to us from Obama’s other lies. For example, I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to find out what lies he told us that led to his whispered assurance to a Russian leader that he’d have more flexibility to dismantle our strategic missile defense system after his re-election. Just think how much better off we’ll be when he gets around to that one.

I wish they’d told us before that we don’t have to worry ourselves over Obama’s policies because he is doing what is best for us. I could have spared myself great anxiety over the state of our disunion.

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