Mark Steyn on President Obama's "War of Choice"

Who but Mark Steyn can pen a piece that's insightful, clever, dark and dismal yet with a sharp sense of humor shining throughout? I think his Obamacare narrative is right on target and, unfortunately, I agree with his prediction that the abominable thing will be passed, public option and all. Here's the center paragraph of the piece:

And that, ultimately, gets closer than anything else he says to giving the game away. For most of the previous presidency, the Left accused George W. Bush of using 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq. Since January, his successor has used the economic slump as a pretext to "reform" health care. Most voters don't buy it: They see it as Obama's "war of choice," and the more frantically he talks about it as a matter of urgency the weirder it seems. If he's having difficulty selling it, that's because it's not about "health." As I've written before, the appeal of this issue to him and to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank et al is that governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture—one in which elections are always fought on the Left's issues and on the Left's terms, and in which "conservative" parties no longer talk about small government and individual liberty but find themselves retreating to one last pitiful rationale: that they can run the left-wing state more effectively than the Left can. Listen to your average British Tory or French Gaullist on the campaign trail, pledging to "deliver" government services more "efficiently."

Then Steyn goes on to talk about the "lunatic mainstream" of liberalism, picking up his theme of which I had mentioned hearing him speak earlier. It totally makes sense that President Obama would be willing to lose 25 points off his approval rating and the House of Representatives in 2010 to pass this health care legislation. The thing is so huge and so overwhelming that passing it will cause a leftward seismic shift in the entire nation. That's all we need—another third rail.