Do you know any Bolsheviks?

Back in January, President Obama surprised the Republicans by insisting that their meeting be on C-Span (unlike the healthcare debate, which he had promised would be on C-Span), He tried, quite successfully, to make Republicans seem unreasonable and ultra-partisan by saying that they reacted to the Health Care Bill like it was a "Bolshevik Plot". He characterized the plan as "pretty centrist". Hmmmm.

There aren't any Bolsheviks anymore. But I think you could characterize the Democrats' plan as a "Statist Plot", given the way the Democrats tried to rush it through with no debate or scrutiny, given the special deals for Democratic constituents, given that they seem to be willing to sacrifice their majority in 2010, given that they at one point inserted language to make certain parts of the bill irreversible by future congresses, and given that President Obama and other Democrats have stated that they intend for this plan to lead to a single-payer system. (Follow the links here).

Lenin said,

Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.

Mark Steyn said,

Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever-expanding number of government jobs will be statists – sometimes hard-core Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily "compassionate" statists, but always statists. The short history of the post-war welfare state is that you don't need a president-for-life if you've got a bureaucracy-for-life: The people can elect "conservatives," as the Germans have done and the British are about to do, and the Left is mostly relaxed about it because, in all but exceptional cases (Thatcher), they fulfill the same function in the system as the first-year boys at wintry English boarding schools who, for tuppence-ha'penny or some such, would agree to go and warm the seat in the unheated lavatories until the prefects strolled in and took their rightful place.

I saw the video clip of the President dressing down the Republicans, which had been put on YouTube by the big Lefty blog "Talking Points Memo", at a link which presented additional evidence that the "Coffee Party Organizers" were more than just beginners at political action (as they had been represented by themselves and by the press). Some of them had clear Marxist leanings. This crowd was probably not as happy with some of the videos from the "health care summit".

There is no "Bolshevik plot". President Obama had many Marxist influences during his formative years, and he has appointed a few people with strong Marxist leanings. But they are not "Bolshviks". And most of the Democrats pushing this bill are not Marxists, even though many admire some of the principles which Marx advanced. The sleazy, devious, desperate and sometimes whacky tactics used to pass the various versions of this bill are a testament to the fact that it is not "centrist". The Democrats could not pass it with a filibuster-proof Congress. The Republicans were totally beside the point until Scott Brown was elected. They were not, at certain points, even expected to know what was in the bill before voting on it (the same was true for some Democrats).

Are you getting a better feeling for how the President manipulates language to divert attention from reality? No wonder his approval ratings have fallen so fast.

Despite the collusion of the mainstream Media. Ed Morrissey:

Yesterday I spoke at the Kill the Bill Rally staged by Minnesota Majority at the state capital. The event drew thousands of people, which makes them about 100 times more newsworthy than the “coffee party” gatherings that drew tens of people … three tens of people in St. Louis, for instance, which garnered CNN’s attention. I didn’t see CNN at our little get-together, but perhaps the cold weather and bitter wind deterred them from covering our grassroots event. It didn’t deter thousands of Minnesotans from joining our call to kill the ObamaCare bill and start over from scratch on reforming the cost structure of American health care. . . .

I’m amazed at the hubris of these politicians and their elite group of allies in Washington DC. Perhaps in early 2009, after that big election win the previous November, they had an excuse to assume that they had a mandate for a radically statist agenda, one that sought to make the most private of decisions subject to government oversight – the choices we make for our own health. Since last summer, though, they have no excuses. . .

However, even in the November elections, Obama and the vast majority of Democrats who won DID NOT run on the radical statist agenda which they are now attempting to impose on us. So they had no excuses even in January, 2009 for their statist push to pre-cripple future generations (Mark Steyn's colorful characterization).