The New USSRists

I was watching White House spokesman Jay Carney on the tube today. He was "responding" to questions about the disastrous Obamacare roll-out in his usual way, to wit, a mix of aggression, dismissal, insult, and obfuscation, and that's when he bothers to address the questions asked. It was depressing seeing, yet again, the misadministration put out its lying and contradictory statements on Obamacare starting, of course, with you can keep your doctor and current insurance except when we say you can't; the website is working and we have hired all sorts of braniacs to fix it; and on and on and on. It is depressing but educational. After not too long, you become aware that Obamacare's promoters don't care if the website works or doesn't; if there are more uninsured now than before; or if your insurance deductibles and premiums go up or down. That's not the point of Obamacare. Putting us on the path to the USSR is the point. Let me explain.

Back in the old days at university, I had endless debates with self-proclaimed Marxists. I guess I was never young since I never went through a Marxist phase in my life, and just couldn't understand why anybody took Marxism seriously. That said, a lot of my colleagues were going through Marxist phases and would argue passionately the benefits of the Marxist lifestyle. These friends would inevitably reply to the obvious and serious moral and practical shortcomings of Marxist states such as the USSR or the GDR with the well worn phrase, "Those aren't real Marxist countries." The true Marxist believers--and it was and is a religion more than anything else--would argue that the USSR, GDR, Poland, etc., had deviated from the path of Marxism and become something else; that one could not criticize Marxism by pointing to those countries as examples of putative Marxist paradises. OK, crazy college kids looking for utopias and getting frustrated by the fact that reality always seems to mug travelers on the road to utopia, forcing them to stop somewhere else. That doesn't mean utopia is not there right, man? Fine. Hey, if you can't be stupid and frustrated when you're young, when can you be?

The problem we now face is different. The people we have running and ruining our country are not really Marxists. They have taken bits and pieces of Marxism such as the hatred of capitalism, the belief that the history of the West is an unending saga of greed, corruption, exploitation, and death, and, above all, that there is a need for a vanguard that will transform society. Yes, you guessed it, they are the vanguard who will transform society. Unlike some modern day Marxist philosophes, however, they are not really concerned about educating the rest of us in seeing the wisdom of their vision, of their transformative work. Not at all. They are much more practical than that. They want to control the state and the coercive power of the state to force, yes, force, the rest of us into living life as they want it lived.  They want and will use the many coercive agencies of the modern state in furtherance of their objectives. The IRS, for example, will crush political opponents; agencies such as the EPA will silence pesky business owners, etcetera.

And what is the vision that drives these new mandarins, these elites? Government. That's all. They want a society in which government forms the center of our lives. Government will decide. Even and especially our most personal decisions must be tempered by taking into account the government. Can and may we have a gun for home defense? What kind of health insurance and health care can and may we have? Can and may we have a car? What type? What salaries can and may we earn? What speech can and may we utter so as not to be considered hate-mongers? You get it.

The bottom line is that new leftists are not embarrassed by the bureaucratic nightmare of the USSR and the GDR. Not at all. That is their goal. They want a society defined and built around government, and they, of course, will control it.

Forward! Back to the USSR!