The Spanish Prisoner

Somebody once defined a fanatic as someone who redoubles his efforts after he’s forgotten what it is that he’s trying to do. I suppose that by that definition the Democrats and their supporters qualify as fanatics. The only important thing to them is that Congress pass a health care bill. The question of what the bill will actually do is irrelevant. Michael Moore and Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean all say that we must support this legislation because… well, because it’s labeled “health care reform”. Isn’t that a good enough reason for you?

Supporters of this bill would do well to ask themselves why the bill is designed so that most of the provisions won’t take effect until 2014. (Interestingly enough, this will be after Obama stands for re-election.) Could it be that the authors of this bill realize that when the full impact of it is felt, people won’t like it?

Thirty-three states are planning legal challenges to this bill. This could be significant. (You may recall that it was lawsuits by states that stopped the Bush administration from going through with its plans to issue national id cards.) Of course, most of these states are probably opposed to the legislation for all the wrong reasons. That’s the sorry state of U.S. politics today: we have to rely on reactionary state governments to defend us from reactionary legislation that’s been gussied up to look “progressive”.

Update: I have since learned that the quote is from George Santayana. His exact words were: “A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.”

I watched some of the final debates on TV. They were about abortion, as if the health and welfare of Americans were matters of secondary importance.

This entry was posted on March 21, 2010 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Democrats, Parliamentary cretinism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.