Not long ago, President Obama argued that health care – and by this he means Obamacare – was a “right.” The idea is that a right to buy insurance in a fabricated state-run marketplace is more vital than the right to self-defense (that one Obama isn’t crazy about). A few years back, the president argued that “dignity and opportunity aren’t just gifts to be handed down by a generous government or by a generous employer, they are rights given by God, as undeniable and worth protecting as the Grand Canyon or the Great Smoky Mountains.” I imagine this idea is shared by many millions.

Was that bizarre? Does a government have the fundamental right to provide all citizens with a good paycheck or a union job assembling subsidized wind turbines? If there is a God, I suspect he may well want us to get rid of the IRS and pass a flat tax so we can fill our returns on a postcard every year. But that issue, like the right to free community college, is a matter of contemporary policy and process not a right…

Cruz’s speech, with too many bromides for my own tastes, was the kind of unadulterated American idealism that the smart people in Washington like to ridicule. In some ways, it’s probably a reaction to the years of unadulterated progressive idealism that’s reimagined the purpose of the state in American life. The kind of rhetoric that allows a presidential candidate claim that his primary victory is the moment “when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal.” The kind of rhetoric smart people should ridicule.