Nancy Pelosi explains her "pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it," accepts your "hoop-di-doo and ado," and flips the old "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" on us.

On "Meet the Press" this morning, David Gregory confronted Pelosi with her old statement, "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy." He asked:

And hasn't that idea, that you have to pass it before you know what's in it, isn't that really the problem, as you look back on it? That the-- there was such a rush to get this done, no Republicans voting for it, and now there are unintended effects of this that were foreseen at the time that you couldn't know the impact of it. And now this is coming home to roost.

Unintended, yet foreseen. Foreseen, and yet with unknown impact. As one might say: the known unknowns.

Pelosi answered:

No. What I was saying there is we are House and the Senate. We get a bill. We go to conference or we ping-pong it, and then you see what the final product is. 

That is, the contents of the bill will change in the process of getting it through, but whatever it would be, it would be good:

However, I stand by what I said there. When people see what is in the bill, they will like it. And they will. And so, while there's a lot of hoop-di-doo and ado about what's happening now -- very appropriate. I'm not criticizing. I'm saying it took a great deal for us to pass this bill. I said if we go up to the gate and the gate is locked, we'll unlock the gate. If we can't do that, we'll climb the fence. If the fence is too high, we'll pole vault in. If we can't do that, we'll helicopter in, but we'll get it done.

So when the people have finished with this hoop-di-doo and ado, they'll find they like what Pelosi got done.

But, again, this is never thought to be easy. And the fact is, it doesn't matter what we're saying here: What matters? What happens at the kitchen table of the American people. And how they will have more affordability, more accessibility, better quality care, prevention, wellness, a healthier nation honoring the vows of our founders of life, a healthier life. Liberty to pursue their happiness, not be chained by a policy.

That last bit is a corruption of the words of the Declaration of Independence, the statement of belief that "all men are... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Look closely at how she flipped that idea about limited government into a basis for vastly expanded government.

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This calls for a 2-part reading from George Orwell's "1984":

The heirs of the French, English and American revolutions had partly believed in their own phrases about the rights of man, freedom of speech, equality before the law, and the like, and had even allowed their conduct to be influenced by them to some extent. But by the fourth decade of the twentieth century all the main currents of political thought were authoritarian....

[T]he Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority. That it sought power because men in the mass were frail cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves. That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better.