Katherine Kersten: The 'anointed' will 'fix' your health care

Recent unemployment figures reveal the daunting dimensions of the job crisis. Unemployment stands at 10.2 percent, and underemployment -- those who have given up looking or who have taken part-time jobs -- is at a mind-numbing 17.5 percent: almost one in five. In this greatest crisis since the Great Depression, many Americans are becoming desperate -- watching bills mount, facing foreclosures and giving up hope.

Alarm bells may be sounding for the American people, but not -- it seems -- for President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders. Instead of making jobs their urgent priority, they have launched a wild-eyed, budget-busting crusade to remake America's health care system. They are doing this at a time when two-thirds of Americans say they are happy with their current health care, and in a way that will paralyze job creation and act as a massive drag on the economy for years to come.

To get a handle on this, you've got to get inside the heads of the political class now running Washington. For this purpose, there's no more insightful guide than economist Thomas Sowell's 1995 classic, "The Vision of the Anointed."

The "anointed" -- who today include Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Co. -- are an intellectual and political elite infatuated by their own exalted status. They are convinced of their brilliance and superior abilities, but most of all of their moral righteousness. From this elite's perspective, Sowell explains, "problems exist only because the rest of us are not as wise or caring, or imaginative and bold, as they are."

For the anointed, public policymaking is a forum for moral preening -- a chance for ostentatious display of the benevolence in which they take such pride. It's also a vehicle for their will to power, as they strive to radically restructure American society despite the resistance of ordinary folks.

The anointed like to appeal to noble-sounding goals like "social justice." But their schemes to "fix" society always transfer power and decisionmaking authority from individuals and families to the central government -- dominated by people like themselves. In the vision of the anointed, writes Sowell, "Public policy-making is to be seen as ego gratification from imposing one's vision on other people through the power of government."

Obama and Co.'s health care crusade is a case in point. The almost-2,000-page bill raced through by House Democrats on a Saturday night transfers control over one-sixth of our economy to a vast new government bureaucracy, and invests an Orwellian-named "health choices commissioner" with power to shape millions of Americans' life-and-death decisions.

Voluminous evidence suggests that this monstrosity will reduce the quality of American medical care while placing our economy on life support. Some of its elements have been tried in Europe or at the state level here, resulting in higher costs or reduced health care benefits -- especially access to expensive medical technologies.

But Obama and other members of the elite dismiss concerns raised by this evidence. They attribute critics' opposition to ignorance or malign intentions, or accuse their opponents of being in thrall to special interests.

In fact, as Sowell points out, the anointed generally resist testing their grand theories against reality. After all, they are so brilliant and have such good intentions -- how could they be wrong? In many cases, they actually view widespread opposition as evidence of their superiority.

"The very commonness of common sense is unlikely to appeal to the anointed," explains Sowell. "A public outcry against what they are doing is not a reason to reconsider but music to their ears. To disdain it is a badge of distinction."

Obama's health care crusade is likely to add to the long line of 20th-century ideological misadventures perpetrated by arrogant and self-absorbed elites. (Think of the failed 1960s war on poverty or race-based school busing.) In each case, soaring speeches and utopian plans carried the day, but the problems addressed became worse.

Unfortunately, the anointed seldom learn cautionary lessons about the need for prudence and humility from historical failures. Their cherished view of themselves as a moral vanguard makes this impossible. "What is at stake for [them] in their discussions of public policy issues is their whole image of themselves as people whose knowledge and wisdom are essential to the diagnosis of social ills and the prescription of 'solutions,'" writes Sowell.

For America's anointed, Sowell concludes, "reality is optional." Today, our nation can't afford such willful blindness. On the economic front, families' livelihoods are on the line. On the health care front, their lives are at stake.

Katherine Kersten is a Twin Cities writer and speaker. Reach her at kakersten@gmail.com.