“Do you think when two representatives holding diametrically opposing views get together and shake hands, the contradictions between our systems will simply melt away? What kind of a daydream is that?” – Nikita Khrushchev

Our President reminds me of Santa Claus, who always knows when you’re sleeping or awake, or whether you’ve been bad or good. Apparently he’s keenly aware of our political opinions. Mr. Obama is constantly complaining about the American people’s frustrations with his policies, decrying all such complaints as a simple lack of knowledge about what his plan really is. In speech after speech, the President readdresses the need to correct people’s understanding.

In his September 9 speech to Congress, Mr. Obama claimed that “[i]nstead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics… [a]nd out of this blizzard of charges and counter-charges, confusion has reigned” [1]. He tells us that the only reason we don’t like his programs is because we are uninformed. But wait – only 37.7 percent of Americans approve of his plan [2]. In our President’s eyes, the majority of Americans are thus clueless.

If, and only if, the majority of Americans are truly lacking understanding, it can only be because we are stupid or the President has not clearly communicated his plan. Considering that Mr. Obama has given more speeches during his presidency than days he has served, and because we do have access to the health care bill, we certainly aren’t missing his message. We aren’t stupid. We understand clearly.

In his interview with CBS’s Steve Kroft aired on “60 Minutes” last night, the President got very upset when Mr. Kroft suggested that Mr. Obama’s West Point speech “was greeted with a great deal of confusion.” The President immediately quipped that indeed Americans did understand and dismissed claims of contradiction, saying, “I don’t think [those claims are] a fair criticism” [3]. When he finished recapping his December 1 speech, he ended by saying that “[t]here shouldn’t be anything confusing about that” [3]. I was simply flabbergasted – and embarrassed – by the President’s rush to judge Americans as somehow maliciously incompetent.

Our President seems to have some wild and crazy belief that he knows exactly why each and every one of us is either for or against his plans. Unfortunately the only explanation I see is that either the President doesn’t care to listen or he has a team of pollsters about as capable at reading people’s reactions as Tom Green; I simply cannot fathom any other way he could misinterpret our message. Ask yourselves: what kind of person could only believe that any person with an oppositing opinion is uninformed?

1. “Transcript of Obama’s address to Congress,” msnbc.com, September 9, 2009.
2. Obama and Democrats’ Health Care Plan Polling Data, realclearpolitics.com, December 14, 2009.
3. “Transcript: President Barack Obama,” cbsnews.com, November 13, 2009.

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” – C.S. Lewis

When was the last time you won a political argument with someone who held a different belief than you? No one really wins such a conversation; some merely end up looking more stupid than others. So why do we continue?

There can be no doubt that the opinion on the role of government among Americans is exceptionally diverse. Excluding malicious extremists, our desires for government involvement go from near-anarchy to full-on socialism. Honestly, that’s fine with us. Your opinion is yours to have. People’s opinions only become problematic when they’re shoved down someone else’s throat.

Our legislators are trying as hard as they can to fit an amorphous-blob-shaped peg into a square hole. They will never accomplish this, but with each attempt they further smash the blob-shaped peg with a hammer, disfiguring it and breaking it until it “fits.” Our founders, however, wrote a simple Constitution, and for good reason: it appropriately fit the great majority of people.

Before our federal government grew into an out-of-control spending machine, people were free to live in cities and states that accurately matched their ideal government. Under such a system, one state could have socialized medicine and the other could have completely private medicine. In the former, you’d be guaranteed health insurance, but it would provide somewhat lower-quality care and ultimately cost you more. In the latter, you would have less-expensive and higher-quality health insurance but you take a risk of losing it if you suddenly lose your income. But it was your own choice.

Our Constitution is truly a great document. But when power-grabbing politicians ignore its tenets in an effort to force everyone to conform to an ideal with which few agree, we end up where we are today: severe distrust in government, politicians willing to slander anyone who doesn’t hold the same beliefs, and out-of-control spending threatening to collapse the entire economy of not only this nation but all other nations reliant on the security of our currency. So here’s a [not so] novel idea: stop trying to marginalize the people and instead spend your time opening the doors for us to live life the way we choose. I can’t even think of the last bill congress passed which actually universally expanded liberties.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Supposing that one person’s opinion is more valuable than that of another is, without contestation, a one-way ticket toward self-destruction.