The most amazing thing about the eruption of anti-health care “reform” sentiment at town hall meetings summer before last was the response of the politicians: the voters are stupid.
It was an unprecedented response. Politicians usually have to at least to pretend to care what voters think. Michael Tanner has a piece on National Review about this anti-voter feeling among politicians.
It’s headlined “A Nation of Dodos” (it was Joe Klein who fist gave us that appealing designation) and has a great lead:
On the old Mary Tyler Moore Show, pompous anchorman Ted Baxter once ran for the Minneapolis City Council. After his not-unexpected drubbing, he gave a concession speech in which he proclaimed, “The voters have spoken, and if that’s what they want – the hell with them.”
Ted Baxter didn’t have to run for re-election, of course. Many politicians who share his disdain for the voter do. Many in the media egg on our pols in their contempt for us. But I don’t think they will succeed because we really are more capable of making decisions for ourselves than our “betters” in Washington. Tanner notes:
But the liberal contempt for voters that is bubbling to the surface this year is actually reflective of something much more significant. The reality is that much of contemporary liberal policy is based on the idea that Americans are just too dumb or too venal to be allowed to make decisions about their own lives. They must instead rely on a benevolent, all-knowing government to make those decisions for them….
The new health-care law provides a prime example. Should people be able to decide whether or what kind of health insurance they buy? Of course not. They need to be coerced into buying the health-insurance plan that the government thinks is best. If you leave decisions about treatment up to patients and doctors, they will either go untreated or waste valuable resources. That is why the government needs to inject itself, substituting its judgment for that of doctors and patients.
We should fire all those employees (known as senators and representatives) who disdain us.