“The hard-left elites think regulation is always the answer, and that people need to be controlled. And in their view, whatever the left does is for the greater good, whereas the people who aren’t playing by the rules are the people on the right. Those folks annoy and scare them. Lots of the lawyers who end up at the FEC are typical ruling-class elites who view conservatives as backwoods simpletons who aren’t smart enough to appreciate all that leftist progress can offer. I was certainly treated that way—because I am Republican, I was dumb, I was a rube, unable to grasp their ‘big thinking.’
“And in a way that is more scary. I’d love to say what goes on is simple partisanship—a desire to ‘get’ the right. But it’s deeper than that. It’s a way of thinking, and in some manner, that’s far more troubling, and a worrisome use of government power.”
Spoken by a man who knows from experience: Donald F. McGahn, Chairman of Federal Election Commission (FEC) from 2008 to 2013. He’s a Republican and an advocate of free speech who attempted to curb the power of the FEC in silencing conservative or libertarian groups. [Quoted in The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech by Kimberly Strassel; an excellent book, by the way.]
McGahn’s so right. Leftism is all about control. Progressives are the control freaks to whom control freaks go to learn.
Coercion, coercion, coercion. It’s almost hilarious. Progressives see themselves as advocates of sensitivity, humanity, intellect, and sophistication. Yet virtually everything they support involves imposition, regulation, requirements and (when necessary) brute force. They detest guns in the hands of peaceful citizens, while they love guns in the hands of agents and authorities prepared to impose their directives and orders.
Progressives are annoyed and frightened by dissenting opinion. That’s one reason they resort to force. The idea of others supporting things they detest – things like free enterprise, for-profit industries, private schooling, private health care, use of fossil fuels – frightens them into rage.
Rage is, in most cases, a response to unendurable anxiety. The reason leftists and progressives, particularly those in office, are always in such a rage? Because they’re threatened. They cannot stand the idea of others disagreeing with them. Consequently, they resort to belittling, intimidating and ultimately coercing others into doing their bidding.
Put simply: Being perpetually wrong sucks. It sucks to be a progressive, for that reason.
Progressivism is a psychological pathology rooted in bad, wrong ideology. The bad, wrong ideology is collectivism. Collectivism is bad because it denigrates the individual in service of the group. It’s the most unAmerican ideology in existence, and it’s the basis for Communism, Nazism, Islamism, racism and nationalism.
In practice, collectivism leads to dehumanizing bureaucracy, infuriating red tape and profouundly unjust political corruption. Much of the world already knows these things all too well; America, now in the advanced stages of collectivism, is getting a brutal introduction.
Because collectivists and progressives are fundamentally and profoundly wrong about almost everything, their world view constantly clashes with objective facts and reality as the rest of us know them. What happens, psychologically? They clamp down. They become rigid. They get furious and petty. They call for more controls, more restraints, more regulations, more restrictions, more taxes, more debt, etc. In a word: More government, not less.
I refuse to call leftists “liberals.” Liberalization implies “hands off.” The leftist solution for virtually everything – with the possible exceptions of abortion and gay sex acts – is to stop, impede, take over, control or monopolize.
Control freak is too mild a term for leftism. I also am reluctant to call them “progressives.” Progress, in most contexts, implies something good. But diseases are progressive too; cancer is progressive.
Progressive, leftist ideas are, in fact, cancerous. The more of them we impose on government and society, the worse things get. Look at society today. All the divisiveness, chaos, anarchy, and hatred everywhere. Can you deny it? It’s no accident. Political correctness leads to the idea that there are no standards, no boundaries, no principles—not even rational ones.
When rational standards disappear not just in practice, but also in principle, people are left with nothing, other than corrupt and arrogant people who are more than happy to take over for them, filling the void of where reason, individualism and actual justice might have been.
That’s what we have today. So what now?
People have to find their inner strength and start to believe they’re both capable and worthy of liberty again. We’re bewildered that we don’t have better people running for high office. But it’s a democracy. Aren’t the people getting what they want? No, they don’t want dictatorship. They want freedom. But they’re scared of responsibility too. And when you’re scared of responsibility and the need for independent thought, you become scared of liberty and freedom, too. That’s what the sociopaths in charge exploit, quite skillfully and to their own personal benefit. But they’re not the biggest enemy. We are our own worst enemies.
America — which has always been (mostly) free — has the most to lose, and the least excuse for losing it. America was the model for the world, when it came to freedom, rational self-responsibility, and individual rights. We’re letting them go, but the remnants remain, like faint voices in the distance.
Don’t let it go, America! It’s never too late to reverse course. All we need is courage. The strength will follow.
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