Whittaker Chambers (the writer who joined the American Communist Party in the 1930s and ultimately withdrew), in Witness (his autobiography), came right out and said it:  the fundamental point about communism (and he was referring to Russian communism, not necessarily to classical socialism or its watered-down, westernized version) is that its ends justify every imaginable or unimaginable means.  In communism, there is no such thing as good or evil, there is no religious or philosophical morality, there is no right or wrong, there is simply the rational ideal of socialism.  Whatever it takes to achieve that objective – up to and including the murder of opponents and dissidents in the Russian version – is not only justified, but required.

Centerpiece of the Chambers analysis:  Stalin was not, as generations of Soviet apologists would have it, an aberration, an undisciplined monster, a bad choice to lead the 20^th century communist movement, he was the perfect choice – the logical, necessary, inevitable prototype leader of the world’s first large-scale, ideologically-pure communist movement.  He was the ultimate expression of communism, the embodiment of it, the ultimate ends-justify-the-means kind of leader.  The Chambers book is the complete antidote to the whinings of Gorbachev (or of his leading academic acolytes, like Prof. Steve Cohen of Columbia), the suggestion that socialism (whether identified as socialism or communism) is the answer for Russia, if only it could avoid choosing corrupt, evil leaders.  **

This is by way of background and introduction to the astonishing publication of the Gruber/ObamaCare video yesterday, in which Prof. Jonathan Gruber of MIT, one of the principal architects of ObamaCare (possibly the main architect), acknowledges to an audience at a conference of economists and academics in 2013, that he and his party intentionally deceived the American public in order to achieve passage of the ObamaCare law.  For an American, the Gruber statements must be read to be believed:

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes  . . . .  If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. OK, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in — you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money — it would not have passed. . . .  Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass. … Look, I wish … we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.” 

The italics were added, for emphasis, but the words almost do not need italics.   Their essence is clear: If the Democrats had told the truth, the bill would not have passed.  So, the Democrats lied, and they figured they could get away with it because the American voter is stupid.  And that was OK, because lying and deception are justified whenever they are performed in support of policies and laws the Democrats consider to be “critical,” and ObamaCare was critical.

In the years to come, whenever someone is looking for a textbook example of the phrase, “the end justifies the means,” Professor Gruber’s amazing statement should be the first item to pop up on any search engine, perhaps even ahead of the thoughts of Machiavelli, Trotsky, and others on this topic.

**  Note to the purists:  This writer has no interest in adding to the literature on the differences between socialism and communism, nor in addressing the nuanced distinctions among the numerous sub-categories.  I observe that the full name of the Soviet Union was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the full name of the Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and I leave to others the task of going off on their tangents of choice.