What a smackdown!

One of the most fascinating — indeed, illuminating — exchanges to come out of the House Oversight Committee hearing Tuesday.  Here is Chairman Darrell Issa grilling Jonathan Gruber:

ISSA:  When you made these repeated comments [We wrote ObamaCare in such a way as to hide its costs; we counted on the American voter being stupid enough to believe us; lying is a huge political advantage, etc.] in an intellectual community with lots of other like-minded people, did anyone ever come up to you and tell you that what you were saying was inappropriate?

GRUBER:  Not that I recall.

ISSA:  I guess what you said was popular in that community.

What a smackdown!  But so true.  The “intellectual” class believes they do no wrong when they lie to you, because they are obviously so much smarter than you.

In the Los Angeles Times, Jonah Goldburg described the real genius of the smarter-than-you “intellectual” class:

[Gruber] represents the arrogance of the expert class writ large.  They create systems, terms and rules that no normal person on the outside can possibly penetrate.  They make life and living more complicated and then get rich and powerful off of their ability to navigate that complexity.  Time and again they sell simplicity and security and deliver more complications and insecurity, which in turn creates demand for more experts promising simplicity and security the Gruberians never deliver.

It’s not that Americans are stupid, it’s that the experts have been geniuses at creating a system that makes normal people feel stupid.