"Without real, genuine, malevolent evil to fight against, we'd
all be mindless nincompoops."
I don't know where I
got this quote that I memorized years ago, or why I've always liked
it, because it's not really accurate.
Most of us, unless
we're with military, anti-terrorist or criminal justice forces,
haven't had to fight real evil, at least directly — though our
decisions as voters can make it easier or tougher for them. Most of
us can keep mentally sharp by simply fighting those mindless
nincompoops.
The tricky part is
being able to tell the mindless nincompoops from the mindful
manipulators. As a general guide, the latter are liberal
politicians, and the former are the people who believe them when
they say, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."
Take the health care
debate. One manipulator said that the government must take over
health care because an uninsured woman is wearing her dead sister's
dentures.
Nincompoops said,
"That's awful!"
A thoughtful person
might ask: "If we can use a dead person's heart, liver or cornea,
why not her dentures?"
Manipulators always
have scapegoats — someone to blame for their own failures or the
things that normally go wrong in the course of an imperfect life.
Nincompoops mindlessly
repeat the mantra, "The insurance companies and Big Pharma are
killing people."
Those of us who have
insurance companies paying for surgery, cancer treatments, and
chronic disease-controlling drugs created by the drug companies, are
somewhat grateful for our increased life expectancy.
A manipulator says that
adding a new giant entitlement program, which not only expands
health insurance and prescription drug coverage, but also adds
long-term care to the almost bankrupt Medicare and Medicaid systems,
will cut the deficit by a trillion dollars.
A nincompoop will buy
that fanciful notion, along with the assurance that new taxes on
investment income and payroll won't damage the already hurting
economy.
A thoughtful person is
worried about further expanding the national debt, and horrified by
the addition of 16,500 new IRS employees to oversee the mandatory
insurance program.
Manipulators also say
that with more government involvement, our health insurance premiums
will go down.
Surely no one believes
that!
But when it doesn't
happen, the liberal politicians will say it's because we don't have
a single-payer system and will make their move for complete
government takeover of our health insurance. And once they have
that, they will own us. If we resist higher taxes on anything for
any reason, or don't support raising the national debt ceiling
again, we'll be told the only place to cut is our health care.
Nincompoops will
believe that and beg for higher taxes and more debt.
One thing that
nincompoops and thoughtful people may have in common is an inability
to understand the real motives of many manipulators. Most of us just
want to live our lives, finding happiness within ourselves, our
relationships, our productive work and enjoyable pastimes. We don't
easily comprehend that some people find their happiness in power and
control.
We may recognize the
problem of bullying in our schools, but fail to see it in our
government.
Some liberals are
simply deluded, believing that they do good by forcing others to pay
for their good intentions.
We can all understand
this and even excuse it, while resisting it by citing the law of
unintended consequences. We can agree with many good ideas, while
facing the reality that we can't afford their implementation until
we first get a grip on our existing debt.
But other liberals have
another agenda. It's often hard for good people to recognize
low-level evil, the beginner evil that gets its little kicks from
making us do what it wants.
When it's grown big
enough to control us completely, nincompoops might finally recognize
it; the rest of us work throughout our lives on prevention and
containment.
Nincompoops make fun of
patriots who protest Big Government, with signs expressing support
for the U.S. Constitution and longstanding American values. The
mindless aren't mindful of history; or they somehow believe that
history's uglier lessons won't have to be learned here.
Our Founding Fathers
knew better, and did their best to protect us from what some of them
feared might be an inevitable decline in the freedoms they gave us.
In any case, my first
concern upon the passage of ObamaCare last weekend was that the
tea-party activists might get discouraged. But all across the
Internet they are already sharing plans for the next battle with
already battle-hardened activists.
I watched President
Obama sign the health reform bill Tuesday. His supporters were
cheering; and were those women doing a little chorus-line dance?
Some puzzled citizens
have asked me why the president and Congress are congratulating
themselves for doing what many Americans don't want.
I suspect the
manipulators believe that most Americans — both those who oppose
them, and those who blindly follow — are a bunch of nincompoops, and
will allow these politicians all the power that they crave. I think
they are wrong, at least about us opponents.