The government intends to modify your behavior – whether you like it or not. Because, of course, the Obama Administration knows what’s best for you, what’s best for all of us, and they intend for us to get with the program, or else.
What the heck am I talking about? Well, the Obama Administration intends to ram down our throats, the brainchild of 20-something year old Maya Shanker (see photo by clicking here), who apparently back in 2006 was named one of Glamour Magazine’s “top 10 college women.” She got the idea from a book called Nudge.
Here’s how it works. A so-called “behavioral insights team” would be set up within the Obama Administration. This team would decide what behaviors they like in the American people, and what they dislike. They would then, for example, have T.V. and radio commercials developed to “nudge” the American people into doing what the behavioral insights team wants them to do. It’s a way for the government to get Americans to embrace beliefs and behaviors that the government finds desirable.
A real life example. The Obama Administration loves Obamacare. However, in the Obama Administration’s view, not enough Americans love it, in fact, they hate it. So the Obama Administration has been trying to recruit celebrities (Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys, Bon Jovi, etc.), librarians, and the NFL! to sell to the gullible, and unenlightened American public why they must learn to love Obamacare (or else.)
Shanker’s instructions are to replicate a pilot program which was launched in the UK a few years back. In Britain the government attempted to modify British attitudes and behavior relative to drinking milk, cheating on exams, giving to charity, and energy usage, among other things. Of course the Brits have been suffering under socialized medicine for many years now, so there’s no need to modify attitudes and behavior in that area.
My view on all this? It’s absolutely outrageous that this Administration is taking our tax dollars, and attempting to persuade us to change our views to conform with the Administration’s viewpoint. We’re a bunch of guinea pigs, and if this program becomes fully operational, the American people will be subject to being manipulated by their own government. It smacks of Big Brotherism. It assumes that a small group of people in Washington, the Obama behavioral insight team, knows what’s better for us than we do ourselves.
It reminds me a lot of the out-of-control, busybody Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, who has taken it upon himself to decide what size your soft drink must be.
Let’s put a stake through the heart of this latest Washington-knows-best program before it’s too late. After all, it’s only a matter of time before the government’s “nudge” will become a shove. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s exactly what they can do with it.
