A liberal staff member from a liberal newspaper recently replied to a column I wrote on why Obama should not have the Nobel Prize by telling me the following: “Get a life.” That’s interesting. If life is the standard of value, then it seems to me that the dictatorship, inefficiency and stagnation of socialism (including the Obama version) is the last thing anyone would want. The only people who benefit from authoritarianism and government control are those in power — and even they only benefit the degree to which they can hold onto power, and encourage at least enough productivity and competence to sustain themselves. People in power depend on the fear, neurosis, stupidity and ignorance of those they control. This isn’t exactly good for them, to be depending on mentally torpid people. Put it this way: If you’re Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and Barack Obama, you’ve got to have competent people in the world to cure your illnesses, engineer your airplanes and cars, and make sure that food is produced for yourself and your family. Dictators want to control what they know nothing about, and in the process they become dependent on those whom they annoy, terrorize and control. This was the dilemma of the old Communists, and it’s the dilemma of any dictator, no matter what name he (or she) goes by in the service of political power and rule. As for the liberal who works for that newspaper, I cannot imagine why he entrusts HIS life to the likes of those who only seek power and don’t care what it does to everyone else, including himself. If ideas matter, and if your ideas are true, then there’s nothing more life-loving you can do than fight for them. Fighting for your ideas gives you life even in a context where life is essentially no longer possible. In fact, even if the wrong ideas are winning, and human life becomes ever-worse because of that, at least you’re still enough alive to be thinking about something true. It’s better than nothing. And those in power, along with their supporters who advocate their own destruction, truly have nothing.