… is from Kevin Williamson’s August 24th essay “Vacations and Vocations“:
At a DNC fundraising dinner in 2010, President Obama boasted: “We provided health care to 4 million children.” Of course he did nothing of the sort, but there is an entire cracked political philosophy in the president’s error: Who provided health care?
Politicians do not provide health care. Doctors, nurses, technicians, orderlies, pharmaceutical researchers, medical-device manufacturers, and junior senators from Kentucky volunteering in Guatemala provide health care. Politicians do not feed the hungry — farmers, grocers, long-haul truckers, and Monsanto feed the hungry. They neither sow nor reap. Barack Obama gives the impression of being a man who probably couldn’t change a tire, but we have persuaded ourselves — allowed ourselves to be persuaded — that such men must be central to our lives. The wheat farmer in Kansas or the contractor in Pittsburgh? All they do is keep the world fed and housed.
