The irrational, evil theory of New Left politics—based on denial of the difference between external reality and the content of one’s mind, denial of free will, denial of the ability of the individual to know reality through reason, denial of reason as a guide to action, denial of any causal connection from one’s thoughts and choices to one’s achievements, denial of absolute moral principles, denial of individual rights in favor of sacrificing the individual to others or oneself, denial of the importance of any individual—has been proved wrong in practice again and again, and starkly so by the Obama Administration.

Obama promised that, under Obamacare, you could keep your health care and your doctor. But anyone with common sense knew that it was impossible to keep your doctor and also share him with more patients.

Obama and his Administration—including the Vice President, Secretary of State, UN Ambassador, and Press Secretary—were so blinded by their belief in their foreign policy of friendly dialogue with evil, that they assured the American people for weeks that the murderous attack against the American embassy and consulate in Benghazi, Libya was a spontaneous response to an obscure Youtube video, and they resolved to crack down on such expressions of free speech. But anyone listening to reports from Fox News—a news network derided by the Left for questioning at least some Leftist dogma—knew all along that the attackers were armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, items that would not be carried by spontaneous protesters, and that blaming the attack on the Youtube video was absurd. Moreover, anyone with common sense knew that blaming the attack on the video, and condemning the video as much as if not more than the attackers, was a confession of impotence.

In 2012, the day after the Presidential debate in which Obama ridiculed Romney for considering Russia a threat to the United States, I blogged this common sense:

To Obama, Russia—a nation run by a Soviet thug, persecuting its own citizens for political crimes, supporting Iranian murderers of Americans, violating the rights of our allies, and possessing 1,500 or more nuclear bombs—is not a threat “because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.” Presumably, Obama in 1935 would have said that Germany is not a threat because World War I is over.

America—under Presidents Clinton, G.W. Bush, and Obama—has un-won the Cold War. If we don’t fight it again, against both Russia and China, we will lose it.

Regarding Iran, Obama is even worse. …

Just a year and a half later, Russia under Putin has invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, for starters.

There was another recent New Left absurdity that I did not write about directly. I often do not write about a news item when it first becomes news, because I hope that someone else will write what I think needs to be written. But when time passes, and no one has written what I hope to read, the urge to write begins to consume more time than writing would, and I allow myself to fall behind in my other work, and I write what’s on my mind.

I have let too much time go by on this item, but it is too important to drop.

On February 4, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report that estimated the effect of Obamacare (known officially as the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) on the labor market. On February 10, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf wrote,

We wrote in the report: “CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor.” The reason for the reduction in the supply of labor is that the provisions of the ACA reduce the incentive to work for certain subsets of the population.

For example, under the ACA, health insurance subsidies are provided to some people with low income and are phased out as their income rises; as a result, a portion of the added income from working more would be offset by a loss of some or all of the subsidies, which represents an implicit tax on earnings. Also, the ACA’s subsidies effectively boost the income of recipients, which will lead some of them to decide they can work less and still maintain or improve their standard of living.
…

Ultimately, we project that the number of jobs in the economy will be smaller than it would be in the absence of the ACA because some people will choose not to work at all, but CBO did not estimate the size of that change separately from the effect of people choosing to work fewer hours. We wrote in the report: “The reduction in CBO’s projections of hours worked represents a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024 … The decline in full-time-equivalent employment stemming from the ACA will consist of some people not being employed at all and other people working fewer hours; however, CBO has not tried to quantify those two components of the overall effect.”

Many on the political Right concluded that this report confirmed the common-sense idea that giving people what they have not earned also gives those people less incentive to work. This common-sense conclusion has always been disputed by many if not most on the Left, who call it an insult to claim that many people getting unemployment checks or welfare checks choose to work less than they otherwise would without such welfare payments.

But the new New Left of Obamaland has adopted a new position.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney released this statement on February 4:

Over the longer run, CBO finds that because of this law [(Obamacare)], individuals will be empowered to make choices about their own lives and livelihoods, like retiring on time rather than working into their elderly years or choosing to spend more time with their families. At the beginning of this year, we noted that as part of this new day in health care, Americans would no longer be trapped in a job just to provide coverage for their families, and would have the opportunity to pursue their dreams. This CBO report bears that out, and the Republican plan to repeal the ACA would strip those hard-working Americans of that opportunity.

Many Leftists—such as Paul Krugman writing for The New York Times, and Jill Lawrence writing for Aljazeera America—agreed strenuously with Carney.

In other words, people who have their healthcare subsidized by Obamacare might work less; but—according to the Left—this result will be a good thing, because these people will have more time to do other things, to “pursue their dreams.”

Implicitly, these Leftists are admitting what the Left has haughtily denied for decades: many welfare mothers, many recipients of government-subsidized housing, many on unemployment insurance, many in government-subsidized education programs, etc. choose to stay unemployed or work less because of the payments they receive from the welfare state.

More importantly, these Leftists are evading this question: What if the people who actually earned the money want to work less? What if the actual earners want to work less at a day job in order to pursue their dreams.

A man today might work at his day jobs for 60 hours a week just to support his family. That work might leave him 15 hours a week, on a tired mind and body, to pursue his dream of starting a business, or becoming a musician, or writing a novel. If federal, state, and local governments—through payroll taxes, income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and regulations—reduce this man’s take-home pay by just 20%, then the man must work 75 hours at his day jobs, and his dream is dead. Even a seemingly modest 20%, confiscated or destroyed by government, transforms many lives of dreams and dreams fulfilled into lives of drudgery—forever.

Leftists often call their opponents ‘heartless’, but Leftists themselves are ‘heartless’ because they are mindless. They rob the money that dreams are made real from—even while now acknowledging that it takes money to pursue dreams—and they make themselves oblivious to the suffering they cause and the lives they destroy.

In 2011, I wrote of what the welfare state does to individuals

who work for many years at a job they do not love, for enough savings to pursue a lifetime of what they do love: an art, a craft, an intellectual study, a less financially lucrative but more personally fulfilling business. Instead of accumulating such savings by, say, the age of forty, these individuals may have to wait until the age of seventy. By what right, and to what kind of people, does society sacrifice the best years of the lives of these individuals?

Leftists sacrifice the lives of earners by no right, but by evil.

Every individual, no matter how wealthy, has only so many years of life. Every minute of his life, and therefore every dollar of his earnings, is precious and belongs to him for his dreams.

Now I am at peace and can go back to my day job. But how much more I could have written over the years if my earnings and the earnings of my friends had not been robbed by Leftist government!