For your own good, for the Greater Good.

When you think you're working with a "higher purpose" you can exuse alot of behaviour on the part of you and your allies. Not only can you tell yourself that the ends justify the means, but you can say that your special mission entitles you to dispensation. That you deserve such rewards and that your moral purity ensures that you can enjoy such riches without being corrupted.

It's like how an avowed socialist and hater of the rich can enjoy his own wealth and multiple luxury homes on the riviara. Or as Andrew Klavan points out, the media can freely lie:

So to re-cap: a make-believe story from a make-believe newspaper heaped make-believe shame on Mitt Romney in the face of Obama’s pretending to abandon his make-believe opposition to gay marriage to instead adopt a make-believe states’ rights stand in an interview with a make-believe reporter which in turn led a make-believe news magazine to run a picture of Obama as a make-believe angel which should go well with other MSM pictures of Obama as a make-believe Lincoln, a make-believe FDR and a make-believe friend of Ronald Reagan. One thing you have to admire about the leftist MSM, when it comes to this president: They are supplying us with all the make-believe that’s fit to print.

And that’s good! Because leftists are good. So if they have to lie or twist or distort the facts to fool the ignorant populace into accepting their programs and ideas, that’s a /good/ thing. Because their programs and ideas are good. If they weren’t good, they wouldn’t lie about them, because then they would just be corrupt, dishonest, morally desiccated purveyors of disinformation who aren’t making an honest living but instead go to work each morning intending to mislead an audience they despise. And that’s not possible. Because they’re good.

The whole point of Nanny Statism (Eitehr Mommy-Dem State or Daddy-Rep State) is that the proles "need" their moral betters to take care of them.

If one could get the proles to act sensibly by simply explaining things to them, then they'd already be acting like good little Progressives or Good little Charlie Churches. Coercive force on the State wouldn't be needed.

But things are not that way.And if they need things told in a way that's a bit simplistic or helps appeal their baser natures, or isn't even true... well, that's just a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down.

And if they still won't do what's good for them... well that's why the State is Empowered to do the People's Work. But since our masters are good they'd rather not have their hands forced; they'd rather you get with the program, even if you don't know what the program is and simply put your trust in their wisdom.

Thus lies in the service of "the greater good" are not only acceptable but morally required.

It's for the greater good you see.

Richard Fernandez on some malaise being felt. In Wisconsin and elswehere.

That is the sound of Independent eating crow, together with much of the British Left, who were utterly wrong on the Euro. Not entirely though. The Independent adds, “but we cannot allow them [those whose whose name must not be mentioned] to claim the euro’s failure as a vindication of their entire world view.” Just because the Left were wrong on the minor issue of the Euro doesn’t mean they aren’t right on 99% of everything else. Of course not. Who would have thought it?

...

Who moved the cheese? The Republicans? Hardly. They are far too incompetent for that. The probable answer is that technological change, cultural diffusion and market forces were behind the switch. That is why Central Planning does so poorly. Things never work out quite the way they are planned.

It's fitting that so much of the central planner's energy is devoted to squashing such developments, especially those that empower the individual.

Such as done here, can't have another Edison, Jobs, or Ford.

And watch for the ending line to tie it all together. "If I wanted America to fail, I would have to convince them that all of this, was for the greater good."

More from Fernandez on the rules our betters make for us and exempt for themselves.

Bryan Preston at the Tatler notes that President Obama is off to raise money on Wall Street right after denouncing them as greedy SOBs. The ability of certain politicians to live a caviar lifestyle while remaining true to their proletarian goals is a skill that should excite admiration in all. Take the new French President Francois Hollande. Hollande, who heads the French Socialist Party, has three homes on the Riviera, and is living with a beautiful former journalist, Valérie Trierweiler.

Hollande is described by the Guardian as ” a moderate, jovial, moped-riding Joe Average”. But in addition to Trierweiler, who is quite an eyeful, is quite able to nominate his wife — they are still married – Segolene Royale — yet another eyeful — to his cabinet, making her the “most powerful woman in France”.

If they allow such indulgences in their personal behavior one should not think they'd be so... regimented and pure in their policies, no?

But maybe there's some hope...