Competing stupidities

A big hat-tip to Brad DeLong for pointing to a post written by James Fallows and published on The Atlantic’s website that reminds us that idiocy in the health insurance debate is not the exclusive preserve of wingnut Republicans. Mr. Fallows quotes approvingly from Steven Pearlstein’s Friday Washington Post op-ed piece, ominously titled “Republicans Propagating Falsehoods in Attacks on Health-Care Reform.” And it’s true, there are Republicans canvassing the country, making outrageous claims about the health insurance plans wafting around The Capitol. Rather than focus on the issues (namely cost, cost, and cost), some Republicans have chosen the kitchen-sink approach, whereby hyperventilating wingnuts carry on about how President Obama wants to euthanize grandparents and institute “Death Committees,” or panels of bureaucrats charged with the heavy responsibility of determining who gets health care and who doesn’t.

The perceived need to stoop to this level is telling – it says that large numbers of conservatives are unmoved by fiscal reality (I assume, as a matter of course, that is already the case with many Democrats). So it would seem that we have collectively abandoned any notion about whether these new entitlements are in any way affordable, not just now, but over the life of the program (which, in Washington, is always forever and a day). Instead, Republicans fulminate and miseducate.

Okay, fine and good.

But here’s the attitude that I find even more maddening than right-wing stupidity and bad faith: progressive officiousness and self-importance. It is on full display in Pearlstein’s op-ed when he chokes down all humility and declares, “Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society.” That “once again” is a nice touch, as if the sentiment wasn’t asinine enough. Why it is so difficult for the Pearlsteins of the world to understand the justifiable fear many have at the idea of creating a larger healthcare mandate for the US government is beyond me. You may disagree, but you don’t get to question the validity of my presentiment, nor do you get to claim how someone’s position on federal health insurance is a bold stroke for or against “civil society” – at least, you can’t do it and maintain any illusion that you’re a journalist (or even intellectually honest).

There are 1001 good reasons that the federal government’s role in health care should not be expansionary, and it is a pity that many Republicans can’t seem to make a case against it without resorting to hysteria. But the Pearlsteins of the world seem determined to make our politics into a battle of competing stupidities. If this is progressivism’s idea of fighting fire with fire, then Brad DeLong is absolutely correct when he says, “We need a much better press corps. We need a very different opposition party to oppose the Democrats. We need both of these things. We need them now.”