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I had a conversation with a PHD lefty who teaches at St Mary’s. In response to a comment about the way ACA was written to hide the truth he said

” while it may be true that there was an attempt to deceive the intent was to provide a better way for those who stay uninformed and less educated on the issue. Smart isn’t always popular”

I looked at him and said so ...your way is to keep the uninformed uninformed so that they will make the right choice ? Sounds a lot like Mao, Stalin, Lennin, Castro Pol Pot, the Ayatollah, and every other dictator. The snobbery is very strong in you.

>>” while it may be true that there was an attempt to deceive the intent was to provide a better way for those who stay uninformed and less educated on the issue. Smart isn’t always popular”

This whole episode is more vindication for Thomas Sowell and his excellent book The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, which came out in 1996.

“Sowell presents a devastating critique of the mind-set behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years. Sowell sees what has happened during that time not as a series of isolated mistakes but as a logical consequence of a tainted vision whose defects have led to crises in education, crime, and family dynamics, and to other social pathologies. In this book, he describes how elites—the anointed—have replaced facts and rational thinking with rhetorical assertions, thereby altering the course of our social policy.”

http://www.amazon.com/Vision-Anointed-Self-Congratulation-Social-Policy/dp/046508995X/

Leftist leaders as exemplified by Gruber (and Obama!) are arrogantly sure they know what is best for all others, and work to give it to them good and hard. They are the (self-) anointed.

"..............Ever since abandoning the utopian illusions of the progressive cause, I have been struck by how little the world outside the left seems to actually understand it. How little those who have not inhabited the progressive mind are able to grasp the ruthless cynicism behind its idealistic mask or the fervent malice that drives its hypocritical passion for "social justice."

No matter how great the crimes progressives commit, no matter how terrible the future they labor to create, no matter how devastating the catastrophes they leave behind, the world outside the faith seems ever ready to forgive them their "mistakes" and to grant them the grace of "good intentions.".....

.....No matter how opportunistically the left's agendas have been modified, however, no matter how circumspectly its goals have been set, no matter how generous its concessions to political reality, the faithful have not given up their self-justifying belief that they can bring about a social redemption. In other words, a world in which human consciousness is changed, human relations refashioned, social institutions transformed, and in which "social justice" prevails.

Because the transformation progressives seek is ultimately total, the power they seek must be total as well. In the end, the redemption they envision cannot be achieved as a political compromise, even though compromises may be struck along the way. Their brave new world can ultimately be secured only by the complete surrender of the resisting force. In short, the transformation of the world requires the permanent entrenchment of the saints in power. Therefore, everything is justified that serves to achieve the continuance of Them........

......Conservatives who think progressives are misinformed idealists will forever be blind-sided by the malice of the left—by the cynicism of those who pride themselves on principle, by the viciousness of those who champion sensitivity, by the intolerance of those who call themselves liberal, and by the ruthless disregard for the well-being of the downtrodden by those who preen themselves as social saints."......." -- David Horowitz June 22, 2000