WASHINGTON, D.C.— Breaking his half-a-millennium media silence
from eternal damnation, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor joined
a chorus of presumed conservatives to endorse President Obama’s
health care reforms.
Resplendently stooped beneath a banner reading “Enslave, But
Feed Us!” the Grand Inquisitor commenced with a veiled shot at
former President Bush: “The present fate of men may be summed up in
three words: unrest, confusion, and misery! The bulk of humanity
could never be happy under the old system, it is not for them.”
Inspired that Obama has made government capable of “saving
mankind a millennium of useless suffering on earth,” the Grand
Inquisitor averred that “only now has it become possible to us, for
the first time, to give a serious thought to human happiness.”
Not renowned as an expert in wellness, the Grand Inquisitor is
best remembered for last appearing as the heavy in The Brothers
Karamazov and for fighting food insecurity with his “Bread for
Souls” program. He was compelled to endorse the Obama plan because
it matches his core principles for social justice: “There are three
Powers upon earth, capable of conquering the conscience of
these weak rebels—men—for their own good; and these forces are
Miracle, Mystery, and Authority.”
Legendary as a master of abstruse statutory interpretation, the
Grand Inquisitor praised the Obama plan’s specifics. “Receiving
their bread from us, they will clearly see that we take the bread
from them, the bread made by their own hands, but to give it back
to them in equal shares. They will be only too glad to have it
so.”
Regarding the dicey issue of patients’ choices, the Grand
Inquisitor was dismissive. “Oh, never, never, will they learn to
feed themselves without our help! No science will ever give them
bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay
that freedom at our feet.” The goal, he said, was to find a
universal health care plan “all others will believe in, and consent
to bow down to in a mass.”
He said he empathized with the burden Obama selflessly carries
upon his strapping shoulders. He urged critics to find common
ground, but the grizzled visage lashed out at a Fox News reporter:
“You have no right to add one syllable to that which was already
uttered before!” The wizened wag then subtly positioned Republicans
as the party of “no” in the health care debate by deriding its
plans for patient-centered health care: “They have saved but
themselves while we have saved all.”
Impishly, he turned to the assembled press corps and posed a
Jesuitical query: “Would you go into the world empty-handed? Would
you venture thither with [the GOP’s] vague and undefined promise of
freedom?” Those assembled erupted in laughter and agreement.
Acknowledging that Republicans were being publicly smeared on
the health care issue, the polished proselytizer outlined the
left’s political strategy with refreshing honesty: “We will deceive
them once more and lie to them once again...for we must lie
eternally, and never cease to lie!”
Pressed on the morality of such an approach, the Grand
Inquisitor launched a volley of verbal pyrotechnics: “Who can rule
mankind better than those who have possessed themselves of man’s
conscience, and hold in their hand man’s daily bread? Did we not
show our great love for humanity, by realizing in such a humble
spirit its helplessness, by so mercifully lightening its great
burden?”
Ultimately, the anile prelate proclaimed the left would bring
“reform” to Americans’ health care: “Know then, that now, and only
now, people feel fully sure and satisfied of their freedom; and
that only since they have themselves, and of their own free will,
delivered that freedom unto our hands by placing it submissively at
our feet.”
Ever the cool, detached problem solver, the Grand Inquisitor
ended on a note of hope: “Our work is but in its incipient stage,
but it is nevertheless started. We may have long to wait until its
culmination, and mankind have to suffer much, but we shall reach
the goal some day, and become sole Caesars.”
