Dr. Paul Gordon, a 61-year-old communist and “medical school professor” at the University of Arizona, recently finished peddling across America on his bicycle. Not only had he long dreamed of such an odyssey, but he also turned it into a “’listening tour’…, talking along the way to Americans about the controversial health law that President Obama signed six years ago. … [He] conceived his ride as a scholarly exercise”—ha,ha! Who says commies can’t pun?—“that would generate academic papers about perceptions of the health law…”

Those “perceptions” hearten anyone who loves liberty even as they horrified Comrade Gordon and the reporter covering his trip: “Much of what Gordon uncovered was as unsettling as the current presidential campaign.” Oh, come on, guys: nothing’s as “unsettling” as “Cankles” Clinton’s lying for 13 minutes straight. “Americans raged at the government, at the healthcare system, at fellow citizens who’d gained coverage through Obamacare.”

Yeehaw! Far from squashed dead and buried, the American spirit is alive and well and inspiring fury at Our Rulers! People hate the “healthcare system,” and rightly so, given its callousness, impersonality, and hideous expense after 120 years of government’s messing with it. And Americans loathe the undeserving poor, too, despite a century of Marxist propaganda that working for the benefit of those who won’t ennobles rather than victimizes us.

Naturally, such healthy rebellion upset the comrade and his scribe. “The outpouring of resentment and apparent lack of empathy disturbed Gordon at first. ‘Not a lot of generosity of spirit,’ he noted glumly…”

Not a lot of respect for others nor common sense from Gordon, I note glumly, as we examine that “resentment”: “…a retired power plant operator … in eastern Montana … wasn’t happy about the country’s direction, he told Gordon… And he definitely didn’t like the Affordable Care Act — it was too expensive, and the government shouldn’t be providing health insurance.” Bingo.

“In Pennsylvania, a restaurant owner complained about her rising insurance bills and told Gordon she was sick of her insurance payments covering other people’s medical care.” Amen! All hail the lady’s preference for self-sufficiency and independence rather than the commie quagmire of  “I need or want it, so you must give it to me”! If that’s an “apparent lack of empathy,” may God bless us with much, much more.

“In a small cafe in western Minnesota, a 64-year-old woman accused the law of spawning widespread abuse. ‘Obamacare encourages people to take advantage of the system,’ she told Gordon.”

Yay! Another American encouragingly aware that government always and inevitably corrupts everyone and –thing it touches. Would that all of us lacked such “generosity of spirit”!

“Outside a convenience store in eastern South Dakota, another woman said — somewhat ashamedly,” alas, “— that everyone in town thought Obamacare and Obama were terrible. ‘He just gives all the taxpayers’ money away to poor people,’ she said.”

You can imagine the blasphemous agony that provoked in our comrade: “’I thought, “Oh, my God, how did we get here?”’ a dispirited Gordon told me as he struggled to decipher the anger. ‘I am having these beautiful days riding through the country, and then at the end of the day, I sit down to talk to people and hear this terrible stuff.… It’s overwhelming how little care people seem to have for others.’”

Yo, Comrade, let me help you “decipher.” When a government taxes folks until they can’t afford luxuries or even necessities however hard they work, then hands their wealth to others, it provokes resentment. Big time. And that resentment doubles when the plunder’s recipients are improvident and lazy—as you yourself observed: “Equally jarring, Gordon found that few of the people he met seemed mean-spirited. ‘These were people who would help you on the side of the road,’ Gordon said. ‘They are good people…”

Yep. They’ll voluntarily help anyone who’s temporarily down on his luck. But every man worth the name abhors sponges living off him because they can. Worse, fifty years of the American welfare-state proves that spongers remain improvident and lazy, however, many trillions of the taxpayers’ dollars they consume. Absent hunger, homelessness, and, yes, medical attention when they’re sick or injured, why should they change?

But Progressives are nothing if not bullheaded, arrogant, and smug. Rather than learning from these “good people,” Gordon patronizingly decided he should “teach” them instead.  “… [A]s he made his way west, Gordon’s … depression gave way to a new sense of resolve. As a doctor, he could and should do something about the anger he was hearing. … Doctors, he concluded, could step in and begin to correct some of the misinformation and help Americans better understand their healthcare system. …’We, as doctors, need to help people understand,’ he said.”

Get that? We don’t detest Obummercare—and communism in general—for its penalizing of hard work and initiative and its rewarding of such vices as sloth, greed, and covetousness. No, we reject it because we’re stupid. We need enlightened comrades like Gordon to show us why nationalized medical insurance trumps providing for ourselves and our families while expecting others to do the same.

Meanwhile, our northern neighbors may get a dose of the Comrade’s superior wisdom, too. He’s “thinking about another potential project – a ride across Canada to talk with Canadians about their healthcare system.”

As if patients there haven’t suffered enough already.

The Best of Becky Akers