Angry Lib

Kevin D. Williamson rubs it in.

So, liberal friends and neighbors, how’s everybody liking their one-size-fits-all, federally dominated model of health care this week? A wee bit less than you were liking it Monday morning, I’d wager. I understand, completely: Most of my problems are of my own making, too, so no judgment, no gloating, no schadenfreude (okay, maybe just a taste — dang, that felt good!), because I understand how these mistakes get made. You’re naturally inclined to want to put government in charge of everything because you forget — wishful thinking, maybe? — that there are a whole lot of us knuckle-dragging right-wingers in the world, and, every now and then, we’re going to win one.

I’m trying to be charitable, here, but I really can’t see how you keep failing to learn that lesson. I remember the presidency of George W. Bush, which wasn’t that long ago, and you people went macadamias-and-almonds over a few signing statements. But then — poof! — you decided that the president could unilaterally amend federal legislation on the fly, set aside great swaths of it, and effectively have Congress deputize him to fill in the blanks on a half-finished piece of legislation passed in a frenzy. Now that that precedent has been established, I invite you to think of a Republican president in 2017 named Rick; you can pick your own surname, but I guarantee that you will not think of one that’s going to make you happy.

In the wake of the Hobby Lobby case, suddenly liberals are wising up to the fact that it’s kind of stupid to have your health insurance tied to your employer who may — get this — have a whole different set of financial incentives and values than you yourself have. That’s not just obvious — it’s John McCain obvious. I myself like Sarah Palin, but I know how you guys feel about her, so sit down for a minute and quietly chew over the fact that the guy who put Sarah Palin on the 2008 Republican ticket figured out that employer-based health insurance was a bad idea a long time before it started dawning on you guys. …

[I]f a lot of mostly voluntary participation is a good thing, then universal and mandatory participation is an excellent thing, thus the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate. But progressives are so used to getting their way in court that they sometimes forget that there are other laws, and that some of them, such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed by a near-unanimous Congress and signed into law by Bill Clinton, are pretty plain. It’s hard to see how anybody familiar with both the English language and the text of the RFRA could have been surprised by the Hobby Lobby decision, but the Left was deliciously unhinged to such an extent that conservatives could very well have whiled away the afternoon mixing martinis out of their tears. (If that were the sort of people we were.) (Come to think of it . . . )

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