I Find Myself Repeating … (updated)

That the Left don’t want to know, they’d rather be Left than right

I wrote a couple of days ago about Paul Krugman not wanting to know the arguments against Obama’s changes to health-care arrangements in the US. This proposal is highly political, and of course those campaigning in favour tend to be left-wing, but also rather authoritarian, as the legislation is coercive rather than permissive. ‘Authoritarian left’ is a pretty good description of New Labour, and the antithesis of libertarian.

So the methods used to try to win support for the change interest me, regardless of whether the legislation itself is beneficial or harmful. This video, which I found on the US conservative website RS Redstate, is a meeting of the American Association of Retired People, the AARP.

The middle-aged, left-wing activists running this meeting did not want to know, and I think that is because they had no doubt that they were right.

• Notice that the woman who opened the meeting told the members what their views were, “…I think we can all agree…”. When they told her that she was wrong, she accused them of being rude. She did not want to know their views.
• When it is pointed out that she works for them, her dismissive body language says that she didn’t really want to know that.
• The man who takes over starts out solidly on broadcast mode, dishonestly giving one side of the story. He points out that the current system limits healthcare to support his advocacy of a change, implying by omission that government-run healthcare is not rationed (as we in Britain know to our cost it is).
• At the 2-minute point of the video the first woman says, quite unconvincingly, that she is sorry to her members. She then walks out, clearly in a huff. She certainly did not want to know what her members told her.
• As the meeting continues the next opinion heard is from a man saying he had never been canvassed on the issues. Someone made (left-wing) policy for the association but did not want to know members’ views.

You might say that Obama does want to know. It appears that he wants to be informed of any email or website arguing against the planned legislation. Of course if he planned to have these objections considered with a view potentially to amending the legislation then this would be a laudable if inefficient request.

Read Obama’s words, “…those who profit from the status quo, or see this debate as a political game … are filling the airwaves and the internet with outrageous falsehoods to scare people into opposing change …”.

“So we've got to get out there, fight lies with truth, and set the record straight”

That does not sound to me like a man who wants to hear the arguments. He does not want to know. It appears he has already decided that he is right and any possible argument against is wrong. Actually I think it is more to do with power and control, and Obama is not interested in the arguments against the legislation because they all concern health, wealth and liberty, and I suspect that neither is his goal (at least relating to other people).

It appears that, as is so often the case with authoritarians, Obama has broken the law in even asking for this information. I do hope this is tested in court and he is humiliated. He has already received bad publicity from this incredibly stupid email, more can only be better.

Of course more evidence of the American Left’s unwillingness to even listen on the issue of healthcare is in the video in the update to my post on the police state.

Still the Left does not want to know, because it still does not doubt. This is why, dear reader, that on the subject of the Left and most especially Barack Obama, I have always had My Doubts.

Glen Reynolds, of Instapundit, is the ultimate source of all links, so many, many fine hats tipped to the great legal academic.

Update: the US Democrats are willing to stack an ‘open’ meeting with union members just to avoid having to listen to their opponents. They don’t want to know.

Update: it appears that Barack Obama is breaking another article of the same privacy law. David Hardy, the blogger who points this out, reckons this to be a far more serious breach. Oh, dear.

Update: so keen not to know they try to start fights … with the people Democrats are calling a mob.

Update: it helps of course if you only answer written questions after your talk, but only tell your supporters that they can submit written questions. Then get your supporters to beat up opponents.