Big America

Matt Welch says the obvious when he calls out Paul Krugman for the open, unabashed, inconsistently reasoning hypocrit that he is and just happens to make the most promising suggestion for health care reform I have heard to date.

Paul Krugman's Selective Effigies

First on Paul:

"The New York Times columnist on Aug. 7:

Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there's no comparison. I've gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can't find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds. [...]

So this is something new and ugly.

Krugman today:

A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy."

In debate, that's called a double-turn. In life it's called "you really don't know what the fuck you think, do you, except for who you hate?"

Then on the substance of the health care bill:

"Here's a cost-saving reform I've heard of, that's not in there, because the president rejected it at the very beginning of this process: Place individuals on equal tax footing as employers when it comes to purchasing health insurance plans, so that we can transition from the post-WWII Company Man artifact of health-insurance-as-reward-for-employment, to a competition-spurring, cost-reducing model of individuals owning and shopping around for their own policies. In other words, markets, not mandates.

As Peter Suderman keeps pointing out, this plan doubles down on most everything that's bad with the current system. Pretending in the face of mounting evidence that this limping husk of a bill contains every bold reform idea there is might just be one reason why it's not very popular. At some point, people just stop believing you."

That last part is what hits home. It's the part that progressives just can't seem to get clear about, yet. Everyone knows that this bill has no bold new ideas and noone believes that it will fix the problems in the system. Because it is the same old New Deal-era ideas that voters grew skeptical of a long time ago when America first started unraveling the legacy of unintended consequences from both that era of legislation and the experiments of the Great Society back in the 80's and 90's.

And because Americans know in their hearts, for good reason, that it is more freedom, and the responsibility that comes with it, and not more government that are America's most enduring values.

What the political class is having a hard time accepting, right now, is that Americans have confidence in themselves even when their politicians do not.

For good reason. Because it really is the American people and not the American political class that are the source of America's and all liberal democratic peoples' most honest and sustaining progress. Always has been. Always will be.

And no amount of bullshit out of Washington will ever undermine that confidence.

And that's a good thing. Not something to be forced out of existence.

The only people who think different are those who lack the confidence necessary for America to tackle it's difficult health care problems most effectively and honestly.

And who in the world would want those people in charge of the process?

Not Americans, as it turns out. To the chagrin of leftists everywhere. And that is a damned shame.

When it's not a sign of an America bigger than the smaller visions of its political masters.

And I'll take a bigger America over smaller would-be-masters any day of the week.