Psychological projection is the tendency to project one’s own negative qualities onto someone else.  That is exactly the element at work within a political party that has forged a reputation for accusing its political adversaries of what they’re guilty of doing themselves.

Last year, Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) took a lot of heat from the left when he made the comment that free school lunches offer children a “full stomach and an empty soul.”  Ryan’s point was that a meal provided by a loving mom is more gratifying and dignified than being spoon-fed from cradle to grave by a cold, bureaucratic Nanny State. 

The indignant left trumpeted Ryan’s message as follows: Republicans want to starve poor children to death!  

Now, just a year later, a school lunch program overseen by Mrs. Okra, I mean Obama, implements exactly what liberals accused Ryan of endorsing.  

From the looks of things, the left was jockeying to orchestrate bureaucratic food deprivation, because based on what’s showing up on lunch trays lately, it appears that Democrats didn’t want to be outdone by Republicans in the starvation department.  Currently, under the guise of healthy eating, the School Nutrition Association, together with Mama Obama, metes out food portions so meager and paltry that Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids are fast becoming ravenous and emaciated.

Besides, if that young upstart Paul Ryan had managed to convince Americans that hearty bagged lunches were the way to go, how, pray tell, could Calorie Control Central continue to serve a 6’5” high school football players a cup of fruit, a cup of vegetables, two ounces of grain, two ounces of meat, and a cup of milk and pass it off as lunch?

Back in 2012, when speaking with Al Sharpton of MSNBC’s Politics Nation, left-wing congressman Barney Frank (D- MA) accused Ryan of wanting kids to starve.  Frank told Sharpton:

These are right-wingers who have this philosophy, going back to Ayn Rand that says we should not come together to do things for the common good.  That individualism is the answer, and that everybody should be on his or her own. So feeding poor children, cleaning up the atmosphere, putting out fires in older cities: those are things for which they would deny funding.

Based on the “accuse others of what I’m guilty of” premise, Barney’s statement certainly explains why the proponents of  “cleaning up the atmosphere” have the largest carbon footprints, and why those who are so concerned about “putting out fires in older cities” are the ones starting unquenchable fires everywhere from the Middle East to Ferguson, Missouri.   Moreover, it also clarifies why the left considers it part of the “common good,” by way of the school lunch program, to deliberately deprive growing children of adequate nutrition.

After all, when government does such a bang-up job of breaking what doesn’t need fixing and worsening what needed only minor repairs, Barney Frank is right – far be it from me to believe the baloney that “individualism [in the form of a PB&J sandwich] is the answer, and that everybody should be on his or her own.”

It was during the heated FY2012 budget debate that Paul Ryan’s economic “path to prosperity” dared to suggest repealing Obamacare and (heaven forbid) privatizing Medicare.

The left was apoplectic, and even came out with an ad that featured a Ryan lookalike pushing an elderly “grandmother” off a cliff.   Erica Payne of the Agenda Project, the progressive group sponsoring the ad, said America’s elderly would be put in a “bad spot” if Ryan’s “immoral” budget deficit plan passed.

In response, Fox News host Neil Cavuto accused Ms. Payne of “fear-mongering,” saying, “You are saying that an attempt to rein in the growth of an entitlement program that … [is] going to be running out of money five years earlier than we thought is akin to pushing Grandma over a cliff?”

Yes, Neil, that is exactly what Erica was saying.  Because just as with the deplorable school lunch program, liberals were accusing the right of making the immoral choices liberals themselves had plans to enact.  The difference is that their idea involves literally seizing control over life and death.  In fact, the brother of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, admitted it. 

As one of the architects of Obamacare, the good doctor does not recommend euthanasia per se, but he does believe that medical care should be denied after the age of – ready for this? – 75, which would make way for what oncologist James Salwitz calls the “75 Plan.”

Much as Michelle Obama feels qualified to determine what Americans should and shouldn’t eat, apparently Zeke has decided he’s qualified to dictate when Americans should or shouldn’t die.  Emanuel argues, “Society and families – and you – will be better off if nature takes its course swiftly and promptly.”

Dr. Emanuel said that at age 65, he intends to stop diagnostic tests, and at 75, unless he’s going for palliative care, he will no longer visit the doctor.  That kind of talk coming from an Obamacare architect/advisor forebodes a future where Medicare funding is stopped at a predetermined age.  In other words, health care is about to be school-lunch-sized.

There you have it.  Liberals accuse Paul Ryan of starving children and wanting to throw Granny off a cliff.

Then, the first chance they get, via a government-funded school lunch program, Ryan’s accusers withhold food from the very children they claim need to be fed.  And, for so-called cost efficiency, they would save old ladies from Paul Ryan just so they can dump both Granny and her wheelchair over the Obamacare cliff.

Jeannie also hosts a blog at www.jeannie-ology.com.