"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.
The comments made and opinions expressed in her columns are those of Barbara Anderson
and do not necessarily reflect those of Citizens for Limited Taxation.
and do not necessarily reflect those of Citizens for Limited Taxation.
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