Just want to say a word about the passage of “national health care” — maybe not a very welcome word. There comes a time, I think, when you have to point to the American electorate, who put those Democrats in place: in the House, in the Senate, and in the White House. Pelosi et al. did not shoot their way in; they didn’t stage any kind of coup. They were all elected, by good ol’ Amurricans.

I don’t know about you, but I have never had much patience with the argument that the Republicans “deserved” to lose in 2006. You know the line: “We spent too much, there was too much corruption in the House, George W. Bush was sloppy in his immigration proposal . . .” Well, in American politics, there is always a choice, or most always. If your beef is spending, will the Democrats spend less, or more? Will the Democrats be less corrupt, or more? (Think of the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Charlie Rangel.) Are the Democrats more to your liking on immigration?

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Consider last year’s presidential election, too. The line here, from many Republicans, is, “Oh, our candidate was an old coot, and Sarah Palin messed up in some interviews.” Therefore, the country had to go Obamite? Did the Republicans not offer an honorable and credible choice? I think they did.

You may argue that the voters, in electing the Democrats, were not asking specifically for national health care, “cap and trade,” mammoth spending, “card check,” and the rest of it. And you would have half a point, or a quarter of a point. But choices were pretty clear, district by district and nationally. And, in a democracy, very often, people get what they deserve.

Then there’s the minority . . .

In the titles of its editorials, the Wall Street Journal sometimes likes to ask, “Who Is X?” You know, “Who Is Hillary Clinton?” or “Who Is Vernon Jordan?” Well, we may ask — especially after the passage of PelosiCare, or whatever you choose to call it — “Who Is the American People?” Some analysts like to speak of “the American DNA”: We are a classical-liberal republic, we are different from Europe, we are individualists, we will never go socialist, or social-democratic. That may well be true. But I’m not sure whether countries have a DNA — that sounds a little too permanent, a little too immutable. Doesn’t it depend on who is composing the country — on who is around — at a given time? Doesn’t it depend on how people, especially the young, are educated? “Teach your children well,” sang the hippies, and they were right.

I think of the character of Britain. Is the character of today’s Britain what it was just a short while ago, for example during World War II? Really?

It could well be that, after our flirtation with Obamism — or more of a coupling with Obamism — we Americans will experience a free-market awakening. I wouldn’t rule it out. And wouldn’t that be a happy turn of events?

The general media reaction to the Ft. Hood massacre reminded me of an old joke. It’s about modern American liberals. One reason I feel secure in telling it is that I learned it from a liberal — from the commentator Mark Shields, who told it on television many years ago. Two liberals are walking down the road and they come to a person in the ditch. He has been beaten, and lies moaning, broken, bleeding. One liberal says to the other, “Quick, we have to find the people who did this: They need help.”

I remarked in a previous column on the absence of Barack Obama from the Berlin Wall — on the absence of the American president from ceremonies marking the end of the Cold War. What is also interesting to remark on is the presence of Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state: this good ’60s liberal who was of the school that thought the Cold War was basically a right-wing need, who opposed so many of the policies — Reaganite policies — that helped end the Cold War, and end the Soviet Union itself. These were people who thought that coexistence was the name of the game, and who thought that the very idea of opposing the Soviet Union and winning was dangerous, if not psychotic.

And Hillary Clinton is representing us at the Wall. Wonder if she’ll wear an old nuclear-freeze button. Funny old girl: not Hillary, but history.

Earlier this year, I commented with some agony on President Obama’s Nowruz greeting — his New Year’s greeting — to “the people and leaders of Iran,” as he put it. There was much to comment on, agonizingly. And one of the aspects was this: He stated his desire for “engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.” I asked,

What is there about the Iranian regime to respect? Forget what Iran does in its foreign policy: its pledge to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, for example. (Just a small example, huh?) What about what the regime does to the Iranian people?

They stone girls to death for the crime of having been gang-raped. Think about that, if you can bear it. And, just a day before Obama sent his New Year’s message, we learned that a young Iranian blogger, Omid Mir Sayafi, had died in an Iranian prison: Evin, that torture chamber and graveyard for so many good people.

Anyway, you know all this. I just want to say, now, that President Obama has done it again: has said that he wishes “a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect.” I’m not sure I’ll ever have a chance to question Obama, but one thing I’d like to ask him is, “What about the Iranian regime can decent people respect?”

And did you get a load of what the democratic protesters in Iran were chanting? “Obama! Obama! Either you’re with them or you’re with us.” I’m with Mona Charen (as I usually am): Tough to know how the president can sleep.