THE GREATEST MORAL AUTHORITY in history, as well as the greatest example of that authority, is undoubtedly Jesus of Nazareth. He was born into a world where "an eye for an eye" was the culturally-mandated response to any offense. His gift to mankind was to supersede that maxim with a far more difficult moral imperative: Love your neighbor as yourself. For two thousand years Jesus' followers have struggled not only to follow his difficult invitation, but to discern exactly what "loving" your neighbor actually means. Does treating my neighbor as I'd like to be treated include buying him lunch? After all, I'd like someone to buy me lunch, and with the hundreds of people I know and whom I consider "neighbors" (in a lunch-buying kind of way), I might never have to buy my own lunch ever again. Sounds good so far.
But what happens when I have to return the favor? If everyone expected me to buy them lunch, then I'd go broke. Every day, I'd have to pony up the cost of a lunch (and I'll bet most people wouldn't consider a burrito at Taco Bell a sufficient expression of my love for them) and I'd go hungry unless someone else was feeling generous and bought me lunch. (Now Taco Bell sounds downright proletariat -- Red Lobster here we come!)
It's easy to see how "loving" your neighbor and still managing to get lunch yourself requires that your neighbor not be someone who would take advantage of your "love." That aside for the moment, this brings me to my main point: the Great Divide.
We have all heard the phrase, "The world is made up of two kinds of people . . . " and what follows is an example of a dichotomy: those who like dogs and those who don't. Those who like cats and those who cats like, etcetera.
But one of the greatest (and apparently, the most evenly split) divides these days is politics. When President Obama claims a mandate to impose his policies on America, he's really only talking about the five percentage votes by which he won. Five percent is just 1/20th of 100 percent and cannot, by any terms, be called a "mandate." But, as Rahm Emmanuel says, "Never let a crisis go to waste," and that slim five percent has become carte blanche for the Dems to completely reorder life in the good ole U.S.A.
But if the mandate is insufficient, no worries. What really gives Democrats the "right" to make these changes is their wonderful and unassailable self-image. After all, they see themselves as morally and intellectually superior to everyone else. Morally superior because they take Jesus' charge seriously: they love their neighbor so much that they want to do everything for them, not only buying them lunch, but dinner, breakfast, late night snacks, pay for their school, cash in their clunker, give them a mortgage they cannot afford, and now even guarantee inadequate and expensive healthcare. (Remember that kid who asked Obama to get him out of his McDonalds grind? Done and done! Isn't He lovely?)
This manifestation of love is, in a Democrat's mind, proof positive of his moral superiority. His intellectual superiority is assured by the term he now cloaks himself in: "Progressive." Anyone who is not progressive must be . . . well . . . regressive: a troglodyte, a throwback, a BAD person, morally as well as intellectually.
All well and good, if you accept the premise that tossing out thousands of years of history and proven cultural mores is "progressive." Of course progressives (who used to be liberals until that label became tainted by the Law of Unintended Consequences, more below) usually cite examples of their progressivism in racial terms (no matter that Lincoln was a Republican and that many southern Democrat senators voted against the Voting Rights Act of 1964), but ignore what fifty years of their loving special interest politics have done to the black community: 70% out of wedlock birth rates and nearly half of all young black men in America in jail, largely for crimes against other black men.
Nevertheless, a Democrat/former Liberal/now Progressive is unconcerned with outcomes. The Professor in Chief is all about high-minded theory and postulates. All that really matters is intent. The Law of Unintended Consequences has no force in His universe. When someone (usually a throwback Republican) points out how $3 trillion (an all-too familiar number nowadays) thrown at "poverty" over the last few decades has only made the plight of the poor worse, the Annointed One and his minions merely say, with a straight face, that if we'd spent $4 trillion, the problem would have been solved. Nanner nanner.
Of course, this is proof positive of their uncircumscribable love for their fellow man. Except for the fellowman who has to finance their limitless largesse. He's the guy who gets screwed, because Democrats always make someone else buy the world a Coke. Congressional Democrats are currently exempting themselves from their vaunted healthcare plan -- their own healthcare will not be tampered with, because the taxpayers are already footing the bill. If it's not broke, right?
So not only do Democrats believe you're too incompetent to know what you want for lunch, they want to take you out to a tony restaurant, order steak and lobster -- for both of you! -- and then expect you to pull out your wallet and pay for it, as you fawningly thank them for taking you out to lunch. And they will do this every day of your life, if you let them.
I don't think Democrats are morally and intellectually superior to Republicans. But in terms of pure chutzpah, they have no equal!
Feel the love!
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