Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satisfied; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.—C. S. Lewis
The Obamacare debacle is far beyond web site failure, rollout “glitches”, or even broadly the incompetency in its implementation. It will go down as a classic case of progressive ideological hubris, or as Daniel Henninger describes it, “…..the failure of the very idea of progressive government. Not liberal government. Progressive government”. It goes far beyond the typical partisan warfare of such as the so-called shutdown crisis and other similar inside the Beltway spectacles. This is watershed stuff. The Obama phenomenon was about the revival of the progressive movement of the early 20th century, beyond 1960s liberalism, and made particularly distinctive by the mandates of the Obamacare legislation, which are consistent with the spirit of the “general will” of the social contract of Jean Jacques Rousseau–you will be forced by mandate to be “free”. This has never worked in America and it won’t work now.
Beyond the obvious lies from the President and the con job about retaining existing insurance coverage, there has been expert reporting and at least tacit acknowledgment that the Obama administration knew months in advance of the rollout that the enrollment systems were not ready, but that they refused to admit this and proceeded with the rollout as scheduled because they did not want to succumb to Republican pressure to delay the implementation or to undermine their political position in the face of opposition proposals to postpone implementation and the individual mandates, which would have amounted to a political defeat and capitulation during the budget showdown. This is what you get when political hacks are making policy, and it is an abdication of leadership accountability of the first order.
Given the magnitude of the economic impact of a failure to launch an undertaking of this size while covering up the knowledge of a defect of this magnatude represents a subordination of the public interest to partisan political interest that, when fully vetted, could border on grounds for impeachment. In a parliamentary system, the government would be forced to resign. Accountability to the truth should trump political calculation without exception.
