I once thought of Barack Obama as an evil man.
Barack Obama dismisses his critics with the enthusiasm of a child leaving school for summer vacation. Perhaps we are not completely right about everything we say. Reading someone on the inside, especially someone who plays us with carefully practiced external behavior is a tricky business. A week ago, George Stephanopolous (ABC) questioned Mr. Obama about his contention that a federal law making health insurance mandatory for everyone is not a tax increase. Watching this clip of the interview again, resulted in a transformative moment. Have I misjudged Barack Obama?
A comparison given by Barack Obama during the interview set me to thinking.
The responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase … any more than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase. People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I’m not covering all the costs.
Hold on, I thought. The issues of health and auto insurance are fundamentally different. This insight was helped along by the fact that I’m an old guy. I recall the debate on mandatory auto insurance well enough to know its tipping point. Owning and driving a car is not a fundamental right. You may operate a vehicle on private land without insurance, and without a drivers’ license for that matter. It is however, within the scope of state and local government authority to regulate driving on public streets and roads for the sake of public safety. That established authority was extended to assure liability coverage in case a driver causes damage to other people and their property.
Like Obama’s supporters, I too was impressed with his campaign performance, trouncing Hillary Clinton – beating her at her own game; manipulating the press as he manipulated the rest of his audience. Dishonest yes – but intelligent, I thought then. Cold, calculating, and manipulative. Perhaps I was wrong. After the election, handling questions impromptu rather than reading his teleprompter or reciting well practiced speeches, he appeared on occasion to be a bumbling idiot. Perhaps European commentators are right, I thought. Barack Obama isn’t evil. He’s just young and inexperienced, and too full of himself to seek wiser council on complicated matters when needed. Or, as many have observed; just hangs with a bad crowd and has been too heavily influenced by bizarre ideas from the fringe.
Then I thought again.
Before running for office, Barack Obama graduated from Columbia University (political science) and Harvard Law School, was president of the Harvard Law Review, a University of Chicago constitutional law professor, and an experienced civil rights attorney. It is within reason to believe that he has a basic understanding of his proposals for legal reform and the arguments he makes to promote them. We can, I assert, grant Barack Obama full responsibility for his own beliefs and behavior. We can, honestly and without reservation, fault him for the implications of his proposals.
Glaringly obvious at once is the fact that the one identifiable trigger for mandatory health insurance, our existence, is a fundamental right. (“… life, …â€Â) Any competent constitutional lawyer or law professor, especially one practiced in civil rights law, understands that any successful shift in legal jurisdication to the federal government results in the elimination of civil rights. The shift requires reclassification of laws to social or economic policy, allowing completely arbitrary political control (with the exception of draconian equal treatment). (“… liberty, …â€Â) A political science graduate, and holder of the office of president, surrounded by as many economic and budget analysts as he pleases as well as other political scientists and historians, Barack Obama also understands the implications of pulling heath care, along with other major parts of the U.S. economy, into the mandatory portion of the federal budget. We all get the bill, one so large that it will cause generations of suffering. (“… and the pursuit of happiness.â€Â)
Whether or not forcing the cost of mandatory health insurance on the public is properly labeled a “tax†or not is a trivial matter. A rose, or its fertilizer, smells the same regardless of the name you choose. Much more important is that Barack Obama plans – yes, knowingly and intentionally – to make our very existence a sufficient basis for exercising arbitrary political control. He plans to overthrow Constitutional rule once and for all. This is by any reasonable definition, a “High Crime†against the United States of America. It is a coup.
I was right the first time. Barack Obama is an evil man.
