Last week, many pundits and politicians on the right were gleeful, believing that ObamaCare, in all its hubristic and over-reaching glory, signaled the demise of progressivism. Even the progressives thought so, which is why the execrable Harry Reid (D-NV) exercised the nuclear option in the Senate, and the Obama administration announced a “breakthrough” deal with Iran that is nothing of the sort.

Yet progressivism is far more resilient than that. It not only caters to the baser instincts of the human condition, it rewards them and coats them with a patina of legitimacy. Furthermore, such catering is no longer limited to the lower end of the economic spectrum. What we are seeing in America right now is a pincer movement: the “government cheese” crowd, in tandem with the QE elitists, are feasting on the shrinking group of Americans who remain tethered to the idea that integrity and self-sufficieny are the true virtues of a life well lived.

Only if virtues still matter. Last month, 10,965,735 people collected federal disability benefits. In July of 2012, 8.7 million Americans were collecting those payments. As little as 11 years ago, there were 35.5 working Americans for every person on disability. By May of 2012, the number was one worker on disability for every 16.3 people working.

The other figures that comprise the so-called safety net tell a similar story. There are record numbers of people using food stamps, and a record number of Americans on other government assistance programs in general. In fact, there are 35 states where collecting welfare pays more than a minimum-wage job, and 13 states where it pays more than a $15 per hour job.

Let’s stipulate two things: first, there are genuinely needy people in the country who most Americans have no problem whatsoever helping. Second, there are legions of able-bodied Americans gaming the system.

When I worked as an after-school instructor in NYC, I explained to my students that if one eliminated virtue from one’s choices, selling crack cocaine on a street corner was far more economically lucrative than working in a fast-food joint. Gaming the system vs. working at all is that choice writ large.

Yet while people understand that segment of the looter mentality, what is going on at the other end of the economic spectrum is less clear. Yet it is equally despicable, if not more so, because it involves highly-educated people who are far more aware of what they are doing. As a study by University of California-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez reveals, the top one percent of Americans received a whopping 95 percent of income gains between 2009 and 2012. During that same period, touted as the beginning of the economic recovery, the median household income declined by 4.4 percent.

This boon for the one percent comes courtesy of the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing (QE) policy, which most Americans understand about as well as they understand Sanskrit. I won’t rehash it here, but suffice it to say that Andrew Huszar, the man in charge of running the program for over a year, not only apologized to the nation, but called it “the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.” That would be the same Wall Street where the top one percent owns 83 percent of all U.S. stocks.

What the rest of Americans do understand is this: if they’re not willing to risk their hard-earned gains on Wall Street, their chances of getting a decent return on their savings or other investments are nil. CDs and savings accounts are a cruel joke, as are everything else where one can get decent return absent considerable risk. Now, toss in the crony capitalist crowd, as in the companies and individuals whose “symbiotic” relationship with the Obama administration earns them the kind of preferential treatment that would make anyone with an ounce of virtue blush, and we reach the ultimate question with regard to the survivability of progressive ideology:

Do the total number of looters on both ends of the political spectrum, coupled with enough under-educated Americans who consistently vote against their own self-interests, comprise a majority of the voting public?

During the 2012 election campaign, Mitt Romney was excoriated for his remarks regarding the 47 percent of Americans whom he believed automatically voted for progressive ideology. To a large extent that criticism was justified, because it only focused on one segment of the looter class. Moreover, Mitt and his advisors were clueless with regard to combatting one of the most pernicious lies out there: as the Saez study further revealed, the top 1 percent grabbed 65 percent of income growth during the Bush years – 30 percent less than when the self-labled “party of the people” gained control of the government.

In other words, Democrats, not Republicans, are far more adept at screwing over what’s left of middle-class America. Or more accurately, a progressive ideology that wraps itself in such noble phrases as “social justice,” and “speaking truth to power,” even as the genuinely just are getting hosed, and those ostensibly speaking truth to power are the ones wielding the power for themselves and their well-connected friends.

None of this absolves Republicans. That they are statically less corrupt than Democrats is hardly comforting, and while they haven’t been as dedicated to aiding and abetting the looters as Democrats, precious few of them are standing up for the interests of ordinary Americans. What Americans really need to understand is that both parties have been co-opted by the same bankrupt ideology. The only separation between the two is a matter of degree.

For America to right itself, the distinction must be made, not between Democrat and Republican, but progressive and conservative.

This is where ObamaCare becomes a critical part of the equation. This odious piece of legislation is many things, but above all else it is an ongoing advertisement for the bankruptcy of progressive ideology. From the inexcusable lie the president and his party told to get it passed, to the millions upon millions of cancelled insurance policies, the twin scourges of progressivism – “by any means necessary” and “unintended consequences” – are being played out on a daily basis. Yet that huge gift to conservatism, must be measured against the possibility that it may be too little, too late. A society with millions of virtue-free citizens is a hugely unpredictable society. The great alleviator known as “everybody else is doing it, why not me” is a powerful aphrodisiac.

How powerful? Powerful enough where no conservative should be engaged in the kind of gloating witnessed from that side of the political spectrum in recent days. It is as unseemly as it is unproductive. Ronald Reagan didn’t galvanize America by demeaning progressivism, he did it by elevating the virtues of conservatism, and the “shining city on a hill” that America can be.

ObamaCare must be presented to the public as what it truly is: the greatest teaching opportunity in two generations. A fundamental primer illuminating the hubris of those who know what’s better for us than we do ourselves. The colossal failure of top-down centralized control. The integrity and virtue-sapping mechanism best described in a Wall Street Journal column by a women forced to go on Medicaid, because ObamaCare made it so that she can no longer afford to buy her own health insurance. "The way I was raised, taking government handouts is shameful,“ she said.

If virtue is eliminated, there is no shame. If conservatives can’t make that case, loudly and forcefully, over and over again, from now until the 2014 election, they may never get another chance.

And here’s a big hint how to do it. Right now the American left and their media cheerleaders are presenting the public with a false dichotomy to camouflage their own failure. "What’s the Republican plan for healthcare?” they collectively ask.

Here’s the correct answer to that question: the question itself is illegitimate, because the words “Republican plan” presumes the exact same, top-down bureaucratic solution that is currently crashing and burning.

The real solution to America’s healthcare problems can be reduced to two ideas: liberty and free-market capitalism. We need a patient-centered system where the patient-doctor relationship comes first, not last. The ability of Americans to maintain health savings accounts on their own, to pick and choose what they want any insurance policy to cover, and the elimination of laws that prevent insurance companies from selling policies across state lines. We need a system in which a 900 page bill, and 11,000 pages of regulations – not one word of which talks about tort reform – is tossed on the ash heap of history.

That’s a viable beginning. I have no doubt there are experts in the field who can couple these ideas with a system in which people with chronic and/or pre-existing conditions can access the kind of safety net Americans would be more than happy to underwrite. One based on genuine need – and genuine virtue.

We can still be that kind of nation, a shinier, healthier city on a hill.

In the meantime, to all my fans at The Patriot Post, a healthy and happy Thanksgiving. Despite our current problems, we still have much for which to be thankful.

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