Fellow Berean Mark Smith highlighted the President’s oft-repeated claim that if you like your health care you can keep it, characterizing it as misleading.

Of course, many are using the stronger form of “lie” to describe this.  I remember at the US Air Force Academy, the definition of a lie in our honor code was “the intent to deceive.”  Ultimately, its pretty hard to know the intentions within a man’s heart.  So for the moment, let’s continue to give Mr. Obama the benefit of the doubt–since its irrelevant to the point of today’s discussion, and really misses something more important.  Over on the WSJ weekend today, James Taranto makes an interesting point, arguing the fundamental difference between how “misleading” statements (or “lies” as some of his readers assert) are handled between government and the private sector.  In the private sector, claims that you can keep your health insurance would be regarded as fraud when found out to be untrue, and could be prosecuted.  But as Taranto points out,

For the victims of governmental fraud, the only recourse is political, which is to say that it entails relying on the same government that perpetrated the fraud.

Thus one of the major weaknesses of socialist control is illustrated, evidenced in the classic phrase, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, or “who will watch the watchers?”  Our founding fathers were wise enough to understand the need for the separation of powers.  They had a correct, i.e., biblical, understanding of the nature of man–that man was capable of monstrous evils if left unconstrained.  Socialism in the extreme, as outlined in Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, inevitably leads to totalitarian rule, precisely because it removes any constraints.  The first hints of this process are now on display in the microcosm called Obamacare.  When the government (the central planner) declares your insurance plan to be a “bad apple,” you have absolutely no recourse outside the political process.  And that process is dominated by the very people who are taking away your insurance.