Glen Reynolds of Instapundit on Weinergate, and more importantly, commenting on those (er, Progressives of any political party) who believe that everybody should live they way they say (just not necessarily the way they actually live their own):
I think there’s an important point in the comic value: The people who think they’re smart enough, and morally superior enough, to run everyone else’s lives are risible. They’re not smart enough to run their own lives competently, and they’re actually, overall, morally inferior — I mean, John Edwards, DSK, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Barney Frank, Tax Cheat Tim Geithner, just go down the list — and mocking them is inherently valuable. They pursue power, and they exercise power, as much for deference as anything else. Deny them that, and make it painful for them whenever possible. That’s my take.
We are merely the "little people" who have to be saved from ourselves. Yet, if you look at their lives, they are just as likely to screw up as the rest of us. Indeed, sometimes even more so as they slowly adopt the attitude of superiority not because of any more actual character strength but simply on the height of the title. The latter seems to breed that "better than the common folk" outlook that simply calls for a stub of the toe and the resulting nose plant into the cement sidewalk.
Some learn from the experience – others become oblivious. And still believe they know better how to run our lives better than we do. The quote of "Deny them that, and make it painful for them whenever possible" reminds of the main emphasis of NH Speaker of the House Bill O’Brien, that his main role was to devolve power from Concord and send it back to the citizens and next level down of government and to individual citizens:
No wonder why the Democrats and Establishment Republicans fight him so much – their take is that only Government is smart enough to run things.
See beginning of this post!
