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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out</title>
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		<title>Bill de Blasio Crackdown on Jaywalking Leads to Beating of 84-Year-Old Man</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/bill-de-blasio-crackdown-on-jaywalking-leads-to-beating-of-84-year-old-man/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bill-de-blasio-crackdown-on-jaywalking-leads-to-beating-of-84-year-old-man</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 21 Jan 2014 18:12:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill de Blasio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=216938</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Inside every liberal is a totalitarian screaming to get out.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_216974" style="width: 413px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/new-york-post-jaywalking-cover.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-216974" alt="new-york-post-jaywalking-cover" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/new-york-post-jaywalking-cover-323x350.jpg" width="403" height="436" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">It&#8217;s De Blasio Time</p></div>
<p>Bill de Blasio just rushed into City Hall and the totalitarian antics of his administration have already claimed their first victim. <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/01/19/cops-beat-elderly-man-after-he-jaywalked/">An 84-year-old man</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Cops bloodied an 84-year-old man and put him in the hospital Sunday when he jaywalked at an Upper West Side intersection and didn’t appear to understand their orders to stop, witnesses said.</p>
<p>Kang Wong was strolling north on Broadway and crossing 96th Street at around 5 p.m., when an officer told him to halt because he had walked against the light.</p>
<p>Police were targeting jaywalkers in the area following the third pedestrian fatality this month around West 96th Street.</p>
<p>Neither the hospital nor the cops would allow him to see his dad until after 10 p.m., explaining that since he’d not been admitted, he was not a patient, but a “prisoner.’’</p>
<p>Early Monday, cops fingerprinted Wong and charged him with jaywalking, resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration and disorderly conduct.</p></blockquote>
<p>New York City does not ticket or arrest jaywalkers under normal circumstances. Giuliani&#8217;s administration briefly tried it and gave up. Even Bloomberg, who criminalized salt and soda, left jaywalking alone.</p>
<p>New York is a pedestrian city and jaywalking is for places like Los Angeles that are automobile cities.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/extralarge.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-216993" alt="extralarge" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/extralarge-450x299.jpg" width="450" height="299" /></a></p>
<p>Bill de Blasio came in with a Swedish plan called Vision Zero which <a href="http://observer.com/2014/01/pedestrian-accidents-are-on-the-rise-following-de-blasios-vision-zero-plan/">involves a large scale crackdown</a> on all sorts of traffic violations in order to achieve zero fatalities.</p>
<p>&#8220;The goal,&#8221; Bill de Blasio stated in his campaign literature, &#8220;reduce serious injuries and fatalities on our streets to zero&#8230; with strong enforcement.&#8221;</p>
<p>Traffic fatalities in New York City are never going to hit zero, but Bill de Blasio&#8217;s crackdown on jaywalking has already put one man in the hospital. While Bill de Blasio campaigned against police brutality, Wong&#8217;s case didn&#8217;t seem to <a href="http://politicker.com/2014/01/mayor-de-blasio-defends-local-nypd-crackdown-on-jaywalking/">bother the arrogant politician one</a> little bit.</p>
<blockquote><p>As for Mr. Wong, Mr. de Blasio said, “I’m waiting for all the facts, and I haven’t gotten all the facts on the case, so I’m not going to comment on something until I have a better sense of it.”</p>
<p>“There is no larger policy in terms of jaywalking, and ticketing and jaywalking. That’s not part of our plan. But it is something a local precinct commander can act on, if they perceive there to be a real danger,” he told reporters this afternoon, after speaking at Rev. Al Sharpton’s annual National Action Network Martin Luther King Day event</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/extralarge-1.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-216991" alt="extralarge (1)" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/extralarge-1-450x299.jpg" width="450" height="299" /></a></p>
<p>An 84-year-old man crossing the street apparently represents a real danger. Meanwhile Bill de Blasio&#8217;s pal Al Sharpton who has led racial attacks on Jews and Asians is his best friend.</p>
<blockquote><p>The cops on the barricades understand the futility of ticketing pedestrians for jaywalking. &#8220;This is just taking hard-earned money from people who can&#8217;t afford it,&#8221; an officer told the Times during Giuliani&#8217;s jaywalking crackdown of 1998. Another adds, &#8220;I just don&#8217;t think that walking across the street is a crime, and I wouldn&#8217;t feel comfortable getting down on people for doing it.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Bill de Blasio however feels very comfortable about it. Inside every liberal is a totalitarian screaming to get out.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/de-blasio-time.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-216976" alt="de blasio time" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/de-blasio-time-450x303.jpg" width="450" height="303" /></a></p>
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		<slash:comments>87</slash:comments>
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		<title>San Francisco May Legalize Storing Bicycles in Garages</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/san-francisco-may-legalize-storing-bicycles-in-garages/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=san-francisco-may-legalize-storing-bicycles-in-garages</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/san-francisco-may-legalize-storing-bicycles-in-garages/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 11 Jan 2014 14:19:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[San Francisco]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214981</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Plastic bags however are still banned]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/628x471.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-214982" alt="628x471" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/628x471-450x300.jpg" width="450" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>Between this and drug legalization, <a href="http://ij.org/in-san-francisco-it-s-illegal-to-store-your-own-stuff-in-your-own-garage">it&#8217;s a banner year for legalizing things</a>. But we live in a strange liberal system where drugs are legalized while plastic bags are banned.</p>
<p>Or <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/A-push-to-abolish-ridiculous-S-F-laws-5119134.php#photo-5689663">maybe that&#8217;s just California</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Kimberly Conley and Amandeep Jawa don&#8217;t have a car, so they use their Mission District garage to store their bicycles &#8211; in direct violation of San Francisco law.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, Supervisor Mark Farrell will propose a measure to scrap the garage code &#8211; but he&#8217;s not stopping there. This new year, Farrell has resolved to use that website, www.sanfranciscocode.org, to clear any unnecessary laws from San Francisco&#8217;s books and to tweak laws that need updating.</p>
<p>&#8220;We want to make sure that as technology evolves, people&#8217;s lives evolve with that technology,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We are presenting an opportunity for people to engage with city government in a way that works for them.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Plastic bags however <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Appeals-court-upholds-S-F-plastic-bag-ban-as-5116511.php">are still banned in </a>San Francisco. Any chance of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/national-plastic-bag-ban-would-kill-1380-people/">clearing that insane and unnecessary law from the books</a>?</p>
<blockquote><p>In the latest legal setback for plastic-bag makers, a state appeals court has issued a ruling upholding San Francisco&#8217;s ban on single-use plastic bags as a precedent for future cases. The coalition argued that paper bags take more energy to produce than plastic, leading to an increase in greenhouse gases, and also occupy more space in landfills.</p></blockquote>
<p>Environmentalism sure is a strange and contradictory ideology.</p>
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		<title>Barack H. Obama: Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/jack-kerwick/barack-h-obama-inside-every-liberal-is-a-totalitarian-screaming-to-get-out/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=barack-h-obama-inside-every-liberal-is-a-totalitarian-screaming-to-get-out</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 31 May 2013 04:25:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jack Kerwick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Progressive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tyrant]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=191548</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There is no closet tyrant from whom we have more to fear.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/flickering.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-191566" alt="flickering" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/flickering.jpg" width="307" height="433" /></a><strong>[Editor&#8217;s note: The article below was written on the subject of Frontpage&#8217;s central motto: <em>Inside Every Liberal Is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out</em>. To read the winning article by N.A. Halkides of our recent essay contest on this theme, <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/inside-every-liberal-is-a-totalitarian-screaming-to-get-out-2/">click here</a>. Submissions to Frontpage are always welcome on this topic.]</strong></p>
<p>Of all the closet-totalitarians on the left, there is none greater than President Barack Hussein Obama.</p>
<p>A couple of centuries ago, Goethe said: “Tell me with whom thou art found, and I will tell thee who thou art.”  Over 100 years later, John Ruskin made a virtually identical point: “Tell me what you like, and I’ll tell you what you are.”</p>
<p>When we want to know more about what motivates terrorists and criminals, we cling to this pearl of wisdom by looking at their relationships and the ideas that they’ve imbibed.  Yet when we want to know what motivates <i>our President, </i>many of us, those in the media particularly, ignore this time-honored wisdom.</p>
<p>That Obama is perhaps the greatest of contemporary closet-totalitarians is borne out by the following considerations:</p>
<p>First, Obama spent a considerable portion of his childhood in the Islamic society of Indonesia.  There, he was educated as a Muslim at a madrasa, an Islamic school.  That his paternal family in Kenya, a land to which Obama is no stranger, is Muslim, only strengthens his connection with Islam.</p>
<p>All of this is important.  Obama is no Muslim. But his ideology, centering as it does on the “fundamental transformation” of America, reflects the same sort of comprehensiveness and rigor found in Islam.  It is not at all unreasonable to suspect that his exposure to Islam played at least <i>some </i>role in informing it.</p>
<p>Second, as its subtitle makes clear, Obama’s first memoir, <i>Dreams From My Father,</i> is “a story of <i>race </i>and inheritance.”  <i>Dreams </i>relays Obama’s odyssey, his quest for <i>racial authenticity—</i>i.e. authentic <i>blackness.  </i>We must realize that Obama is no different from any other leftist, black or white, in viewing blackness not so much biologically or even culturally, but <i>ideologically.</i></p>
<p>Academic and one-time Obama confidante and backer, Cornell West, summarizes this approach as succinctly and clearly as anyone.  “‘Black enough,’” he writes, “always means ‘bold enough.’”  For instance, Clarence Thomas is “phenotypically [biologically], beautifully black.”  But as “a right-wing conservative who sides with the strong against the weak,” Thomas is “not bold enough.”  Conversely, Adam Clayton Powell and Thurgood Marshall, though light-complexioned, were “bold enough” and, thus, “black enough.”  Both “sided with the weak.”</p>
<p>Read: black leftists are authentically black while blacks who aren’t leftists are not.</p>
<p>Third, Obama’s desire to be “black enough” led him to seek out Reverend Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ.  The relevance of this decision on Obama’s part couldn’t be more germane to unlocking his true identity, for Obama spent over <i>20 years </i>at Wright’s church, and didn’t distance himself from it until it became politically necessary to do so.  Throughout most of his adult life, that is, Obama was under the tutelage of Wright, a man of whom he thought enough to describe as his “spiritual mentor,” the one “who brought me to Christ.”</p>
<p>But Wright’s church was saturated in “Black Liberation Theology,” a racialized version of Marxism founded by James Hal Cone. The latter equates God with “blackness.”  Cone thinks that black theologians “must reject any conception of God which stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples.”  God must be “identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God’s experience….”  If not, we are left with a deity who “is a God of racism [.]”</p>
<p>Reinforcing the ideologically-centered conception of blackness discussed above, Cone writes: “Being black in America has little to do with skin color.  Being black means that your<i> </i>heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are.”</p>
<p>Only a suspension of disbelief of Herculean proportions could lead one to think that Obama’s exposure to these ideas for decades didn’t shape his worldview.</p>
<p>Fourth, Obama became a “community organizer” while in Chicago.  That he looked for inspiration in the Godfather of all self-styled progressive activists, Saul Alinsky, is itself telling.  More disturbing, however, is that Obama’s craft of choice supplies the paradigm—<i>the community </i>in need of organizing—by which he governs as President of the country.</p>
<p>The members of a community are linked together by a shared vision of the good life, a purpose to which they are devoted.  But in America, a country with over 300 million people with varying interests and ends, there is no such shared purpose.  America is a civil association; it is not a community. To treat it as a community is to impose upon citizens those ends that the government arbitrarily privileges.</p>
<p>In other words, to treat America as a community is to undermine the liberty and individuality that its Constitution has always guaranteed.</p>
<p>Finally, consider how Obama has in fact governed over the last five years.  In light of the forgoing points, isn’t this precisely what we would expect?</p>
<p>Whether taking over General Motors or one-sixth of the nation’s economy via the ominous “Obamacare;” whether refusing to enforce immigration laws or exploiting national tragedies to further erode the Second Amendment—Obama has spared no occasion to fulfill his pledge to “fundamentally transform” the country.</p>
<p>Inside every leftist there is a totalitarian screaming to get out.</p>
<p>Obama is and has always been a man of the hard left.  Given that he is the only leftist in the world to have the power of the American presidency at his disposal, and considering that he will never again have to face reelection, there is no closet totalitarian from whom we have more to fear.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Inside Every Liberal Is A Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out (III)</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/inside-every-liberal-is-a-totalitarian-screaming-to-get-out-2-1-1/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=inside-every-liberal-is-a-totalitarian-screaming-to-get-out-2-1-1</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 24 May 2013 04:38:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[atbashian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[contest winner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[greenfield]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[N. A. Halkides]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=190684</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The scowling tyrant behind the smiling face.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Obama.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-190696" alt="Obama" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Obama.jpg" width="298" height="198" /></a><strong>Editor&#8217;s note: The essay below by Daniel Greenfield won one of two runner-up $500 prizes for our <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/1000-essay-and-video-contest-inside-every-liberal-is-a-totalitarian-screaming-to-get-out/">essay contest</a> launched on April 5, 2013: &#8220;Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out.&#8221; The winner of the $1,000 first-place prize was N. A. Halkides (see his <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/inside-every-liberal-is-a-totalitarian-screaming-to-get-out-2/">essay here</a>). The other runner-up prize went to Oleg Atbashian (see his <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/oleg-atbashian/inside-every-liberal-is-a-totalitarian-screaming-to-get-out-2-1/">essay here</a>).</strong></p>
<p>There is a characteristic feature to tyranny. It isn’t the scowling faces of armed guards or the rusting metal of barbed wire fences. It isn’t the black cars of the secret police or the prison camps surrounded by wastelands of snow.</p>
<p>The defining characteristic of tyranny is the diversion of power from the people to the unelected elite. The elite can claim to be inspired by Allah or Marx; it can act in the name of racial purity or universal workers compensation or both. The details don’t matter, because in all instances, tyranny derives its justification from the superiority of the rulers and the inferiority of the people.</p>
<p>The left launched two revolutions. One was the hard revolution of bombs and assassinations by those who did not have the time or patience to wait for the long march through the institutions of the state. This revolution was born quickly and died quickly. It killed millions and choking on their blood it died by stages, losing its ideas and then its power, until there were only a few old men and women in shawls clinging to red velvet portraits of Stalin.</p>
<p>But there was also the soft revolution that was slow and subtle. It was a revolution of laws, rather than bombs. It did not concern itself with 5-year-plans but with 50-year-plans. It proceeded by increments, raising the temperature so very gradually that the free world did not realize it was cooked until it could smell its own burning flesh.</p>
<p>The revolutions of the east failed. They rose quickly in fire and fury and only ashes and statues remain. But the revolutions of the west have been underway for generations in countries where millions of men and women go about their business without realizing what is taking place around them.</p>
<p>When H.G. Wells met with Lenin in 1920, he wrote, “Our essential difference, the difference of the Collectivist and Marxist, the question whether the social revolution is, in its extremity, necessary, whether it is necessary to overthrow one social and economic system completely before the new one can begin.”</p>
<p>Lenin demanded a revolution that would directly attack the capitalist system, but Wells believed that, “through a vast sustained educational campaign the existing Capitalist system could be civilized into a Collectivist world system.”</p>
<p>That educational campaign is the soft tyranny we see all around us. The educational campaign is a nanny state in which we are forever being educated by our betters for our own good.</p>
<p>The nanny state has a short term purpose and a long term purpose. Its short term purpose is to educate us out of our selfish freedom of choice. Its long term purpose is to incrementally “civilize” or “evolve” a free people into collectivism through smaller measures undertaken in the name of the public good.</p>
<p>Instead of a single explosive burst of revolution, instead of terrorists rushing in with guns in hand, instead of bombs exploding and assassins gunning down public officials, there is the slow creep of laws that remake attitudes and accomplish the same purpose not in a day or a year… but over the decades.</p>
<p>Instead of one great revolution, there are a million smaller revolutions stripped of overt ideology and pretending to serve the public good.</p>
<p>Health care is nationalized. Gun control is implemented. Education is centralized. Environmental panic is used to enforce rationing. The successful are taught to be ashamed of their success. They are taught that they didn’t build that. The state did.</p>
<p>The new bureaucratic collectivism sets out to control the most minor habits of every man, woman and child. People are told to spy on their neighbors. Children are taught to report the politically incorrect habits of their parents. The media asserts that all property and even children belong to the state.</p>
<p>Each of these is a miniature revolution. A string of these revolutions over time transforms the soft tyranny into a hard tyranny.</p>
<p>The nanny state is outwardly benevolent and inwardly ruthless. Instead of a Big Brother who must be feared and worshiped, it puts forward a Big Sister who shames and controls you for your own good. But the difference never goes deeper than the mask that tyranny wears. Like the difference between Lenin and H.G. Wells, it is only a matter of the speed at which tyranny arrives.</p>
<p>The hard tyranny of the red revolutions and the soft tyranny of the bureaucratic collectivists both agree on the fundamental premise of tyranny.</p>
<p>A century before Bloomberg’s soda war, Theodore Roosevelt stood in New York City’s Carnegie Hall and delivered one of his most famous speeches, which began with the words, “The great fundamental issue now before the Republican party and before our people can be stated briefly. It is: Are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves?”</p>
<p>The answer of the liberal technocrats, the Bloombergs and Obamas, is a chorus of jeers. They make it clear with their policies that they believe that the American people are unfit to govern themselves in matters great or small.</p>
<p>If the American is unfit to be trusted with a soda cup or a gun or a lawn dart or any of a thousand other things taken away from him for his own good, then how can he be trusted with the ballot box?</p>
<p>That mistrust, more than any single abuse, reveals the scowling tyrant behind the smiling face, the Lenin in every H.G. Wells, the totalitarian face behind every liberal mask. The soft totalitarianism of the public interest technocracy is a tyranny that seeks to destroy the rule of the people and replace it with the rule of the left.</p>
<p>The creeping pace of the soft revolution forces the inner totalitarian to practice some discretion, mummifying his tyrannical aspirations in the embalming fluid of political correctness, but no flood of words can conceal the inner contempt behind the false benevolence of the tyrant who makes policies that deprive the people of their freedom for their own good.</p>
<p>“I believe the majority of the plain people of the United States will, day in and day out, make fewer mistakes in governing themselves than any smaller class or body of men, no matter what their training, will make in trying to govern them,” Theodore Roosevelt said.</p>
<p>The hard revolutions showed the truth of his words when the red kingdoms fell and the soft revolutions are showing us the truth of his words as the nanny cities and states falter economically and fall.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Inside Every Liberal Is A Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out (II)</title>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 23 May 2013 04:53:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Oleg Atbashian]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[N. A. Halkides]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[A glimpse into the beloved utopian world of historical progress -- that sparkles just beyond the mountains of dead bodies.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/bosch.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-190453" alt="bosch" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/bosch.jpg" width="307" height="433" /></a><strong>Editor&#8217;s note: The essay below won one of two runner-up $500 prizes for our <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/1000-essay-and-video-contest-inside-every-liberal-is-a-totalitarian-screaming-to-get-out/">essay contest</a> launched on April 5, 2013: &#8220;Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out.&#8221; The winner of the $1,000 first-place prize was N. A. Halkides (see his <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/inside-every-liberal-is-a-totalitarian-screaming-to-get-out-2/">essay here</a>). We will run the other runner-up essay, written by Daniel Greenfield, in tomorrow&#8217;s edition.</strong></p>
<p>There is a reason why snobby elites on the Upper West Side of Manhattan generously donate to leftist causes and support leftist politicians. Snobs and radicals often act in accord because they are not opposites, as some believe, but rather spiritual cousins &#8211; equally despising &#8220;the bourgeois,&#8221; sharing a low view of humanity as herd animals, and sorting people not on their individual merits but by color, income, occupation, ethnicity, gender, and any other characteristic except the content of their minds.</p>
<p>Elitists share the presumption that people of the world cannot think for themselves and have no room in their souls for individual ambitions and achievements outside of what the government is giving them. Short of stating it explicitly, elitism implies that &#8220;the masses&#8221; are mindless, spiritless creatures without free will, always in need of the largesse of the state, and for their own good the state ought to nationalize the country&#8217;s resources in order to feed its subjects.</p>
<p>While the road to tyranny is paved with elitist beliefs, it still takes a nation to take this road, and a self-appointed vanguard to convince, organize, and lead them.</p>
<p>The term &#8220;elites&#8221; doesn&#8217;t do justice to such a vanguard, which in addition to powerful snobs has its share of drug addicts, bohemians, housewives, union workers, and students, drawing its members from all classes, ethnicities, and professional backgrounds.</p>
<p>The trait that unites this diverse demographic is their smug and prejudiced belief in the superiority of their own ideology, often accompanied by malice and hatred towards those they deem inferior. Perhaps, it&#8217;s time to introduce a new term to the national discourse: <i>Progressive Chauvinism</i>.</p>
<p>My empirical observations have led me to conclude that Progressive Chauvinists are almost completely devoid of self-awareness, assuming the right to control the lives of others out of confidence in their higher mission to help the welfare of less fortunate, &#8220;backward&#8221; people who have miraculously been left without any ability to govern themselves.</p>
<p>In this sense, the United States has for some time consisted of two parallel nations: those who think of themselves as &#8220;progressives&#8221; and those who don&#8217;t.</p>
<p>Progressive Chauvinism is marked by a strong belief in the divine right of their kind to hold all key positions in society for society&#8217;s own sake, forcing the &#8220;lessers&#8221; to comply with superior progressive ways. Believing that their condescension and pity towards the lower beings are a sign of benevolence and compassion, they ignite with righteous anger whenever those ingrates dare be displeased with their enlightened dominion.</p>
<p>An example of such a malicious lack of gratitude is the existence of non-progressive blogs, talk radio, and Fox News &#8211; a threat to the progressive hegemony in the media, which is an inalienable part of the Progressive Chauvinist cosmology.</p>
<p>Remember Barack Obama&#8217;s secretly recorded <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2008/04/obama-allies-av/">&#8220;bitter clinger&#8221; remarks</a> at an exclusive San Francisco fundraiser in 2008? The controversy that followed was mostly focused on his &#8220;guns and religion&#8221; comment, even though a much more disturbing glimpse into our future president&#8217;s mind was Obama&#8217;s condescending assessment of the source of the bitterness itself: government neglect.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion, or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>In other words, the silly little people need enlightened benevolent masters to lead them to happiness. Without a powerful central government plugging every proverbial crack in every wretched small town, no one can ever be happy or achieve self-fulfillment. Rejoice, for if I&#8217;m elected, everyone will be issued approved guidelines, complete with permitted activities and instructions of what to do with their worthless lives in their degenerate little towns. But don&#8217;t you grow bitter: the federal government can make you happy, or it can make you unhappy. What&#8217;s it gonna be?</p>
<p>Progressive Chauvinists say the damndest things when they think they are among their own. The private fundraiser included the richest and most powerful people in San Francisco, all very different from Obama and complete strangers to him. How had he quickly become so intimate, saying things he&#8217;d never have said in public? Apparently, there was something in the air &#8211; the aura, vibrations, ambience &#8211; that screamed, &#8220;We&#8217;re Progressive Chauvinists just like you!&#8221;</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the rest of us can&#8217;t help but bitterly cling to our guns and religion in bewilderment: how can these people possibly function, let alone win elections, with minds so devoid of logic and jam-packed with inconsistencies, contradictions, and straight out absurdities?</p>
<p>How is it possible to hold so many mutually exclusive beliefs? To preach tolerance and be so intolerant? To grieve for terror victims and justify terrorism? To stand up for workers and destroy their jobs? To march for peace and defend the militants? To denounce corruption and vote for the corrupt? To espouse non-violence and commit violent acts? To speak of liberties and promote government dictate? To bolster feminism and deride successful women? To cheer gays and aid the gay-bashers in the Middle East? To champion minorities as a group and hold them down as individuals? To care about the children and condemn them to intellectual mutilation? To denounce guns and hire armed bodyguards? To support the troops and side with their murderers? To demand love and be full of hate?</p>
<p>The bad news is that these are not contradictions. Worse yet, sensible people will keep losing ground to those whom they shrug off as bumbling sacks of absurdities, for as long as they don&#8217;t understand that the above paradoxical statements aren&#8217;t, in fact, oxymorons, but contain a very consistent logic.</p>
<p>In this sense, the best key to unlocking the mystery of the Progressive Chauvinist mind, breaking the leftist code, and discerning their collectivist morality is a statement attributed to Karl Marx, which, regardless of whether he wrote it or not, is perfectly aligned with the moral philosophy of Progressive Chauvinism:</p>
<p><i>&#8220;The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism&#8221;</i></p>
<p>Let&#8217;s start with the last item on our list: <i>How is it possible to demand love and be full of hate?</i></p>
<p>Love and hate are merely two sides of the same coin: one can&#8217;t love something without hating that which threatens to destroy the object of affection. Just as there can&#8217;t be a coin with one side bigger than the other, the amounts of love and hate in any given person are always equal &#8211; because these two are, in fact, not separate but one and the same natural human emotion, only with different integers. Thus, the bigger the love, the bigger the hate. Conversely, the smaller the hate, the smaller the love. A complete absence of hate would also mean a complete absence of love: the apathetic indifference of a vegetable.</p>
<p>The typical leftist appeals for greater love and the elimination of hate are easy to dismiss as well-intentioned naïveté  and politically innocent melodrama. They wouldn&#8217;t seem so benign, however, once we realize that such demands originate in the leftist concept of the human mind as a pliable social construct, resulting in a compulsive obsession to improve human nature by criminalizing normal human behaviors.</p>
<p>Although such pleas for obligatory love may seem broad and generic, they have very specific targets. It&#8217;s always about the reduction of hate and the opening of the hearts towards people and notions that are by and large found within the socialist frame of reference. I have yet to hear a plea to stop hating and start loving enemies of socialism.</p>
<p>At the same time, the &#8220;love crowd&#8221; shows no restraint in hating anyone and anything they perceive as a threat to their mythical notion of &#8220;progress,&#8221; wielding conveniently subjective terms like &#8220;hate speech&#8221; and &#8220;hate groups,&#8221; and coordinating their efforts to demonize and dehumanize their opponents.</p>
<p>Given that the difference between love and hate is the matter of a subjective integer, it may as well be argued that one man&#8217;s &#8220;hate group&#8221; is another man&#8217;s &#8220;love group,&#8221; one man&#8217;s &#8220;hate speech&#8221; is another man&#8217;s &#8220;love speech,&#8221; one man&#8217;s &#8220;hate fest&#8221; is another man&#8217;s &#8220;love fest,&#8221; and so on.</p>
<p>This may seem like an exercise in moral relativism, but it&#8217;s not. While moral standards exist on both sides, they are direct opposites of each other. That doesn&#8217;t mean that one side&#8217;s &#8220;hate crime&#8221; is another side&#8217;s &#8220;love crime.&#8221; According to the objective moral standards on the conservative right, a crime is always a crime, regardless of the motive. In contrast, the subjective moral standards on the left, make a distinction: if there are &#8220;hate crimes&#8221; that require additional punishment, that means there can also be &#8220;love crimes&#8221; that call for a lighter punishment, or can be excused altogether &#8211; for example, Bill Ayers&#8217; youthful terrorism in the 1960s.</p>
<p>So then, is moral relativism a substitute for the leftist moral and ethical standards? Not at all.</p>
<p>Moral relativism is more of a logical trick the leftists are using to a great advantage in any discussion on culture, education, or foreign policy to undercut and discredit the other side&#8217;s moral standards while covering up their own, as well as to confuse and demoralize the unprepared.</p>
<p>As soon as the tables are turned and the left gains political power, all moral relativism ends &#8211; as it happened in the USSR and all other Marxist dictatorships. The trick they used to subvert the existing authority quickly becomes a liability, since it can be just as effectively used against their own power. The Soviet propagandists, who furthered the idea of moral relativism in the West, stamped it out at home. Collectivists have always been thorough in protecting their cultural hegemony, which cannot be said about their carefree individualistic opponents.</p>
<p>The left&#8217;s actual moral standards, whether or not their bearers realize it or are prepared to admit it, are consistent with the logic and ethics of class struggle as outlined in Marxist moral philosophy: anything is good and moral that benefits the revolutionary cause, while anything that hinders it is evil.</p>
<p>There are no moral absolutes except this revolutionary cause, which can be summarized as the historically inevitable transition of humanity from the unfair, individualistic capitalist system to the collectivist bliss of socialism, eventually evolving into the altruistic paradise of communism. This process, which leftists also call &#8220;progress&#8221; or &#8220;history,&#8221; is the only standard against which all things are tested and all values are judged. Thus, nothing that furthers &#8220;progress&#8221; can be evil, and nothing that stands in the way of &#8220;history&#8221; can be good.</p>
<p>That means that if, in the course of events, a certain idea, activity, person, or a group of persons stop being beneficial to the cause of &#8220;progress&#8221; and become a hindrance, they stop being good and become evil &#8211; and vice versa. With the rise of Progressive Chauvinism in the 20th century, that notion had been extended to entire classes of people, ethnic groups, and even nations, whose elimination was deemed beneficial for &#8220;human progress&#8221; and &#8220;the greater historical good.&#8221; The end always justifies the means.</p>
<p>Granted, not everyone on the left is a communist. Many of them would love to settle for a democratic socialist system with elements of private economy (they would just as much hate you explaining to them why such a system is yet another unsustainable utopia). In the meantime, they always end up siding with Marxist fanatics, whom they see as a powerful engine pulling in the same direction and capable of taking them to their destination sooner.</p>
<p>Such fellow travelers suit communist goals just fine. According to Marx, true communism cannot be built while the world is still polluted by capitalist exploitation, inequality, greed, and need. There has to be a transitional period of socialism &#8211; and it has to win globally, with all countries having more or less homogenized and equal economies, peacefully sharing the same ideas, and coordinated by one global governing body &#8211; an ideal construction site for the builders of communism. (The troubled European Union is a living proof of why this is a terrible idea, but don&#8217;t tell that to a Progressive Chauvinist).</p>
<p>Accepting the Marxist concept of &#8220;historical progress,&#8221; Progressive Chauvinists inevitably share the militant morality that comes with it &#8211; starting with Karl Marx himself, who once answered someone&#8217;s question, &#8220;What is your idea of happiness?&#8221; with one word: &#8220;Struggle.&#8221;</p>
<p>A grand utopian fallacy that inspires with a high moral purpose while absolving of the responsibility for one&#8217;s actions is a deadly mix. In the days of the Cold War, the notion of &#8220;historical progress&#8221; as a moral obligation of everyone in the global community enabled the Soviet Union to engage in exporting the revolution &#8211; with all the accompanying gore, violence, and depravity, in violation of international norms and agreements &#8211; enjoying the support of the advocates of &#8220;international peace,&#8221; which in the book of Progressive Chauvinism is defined as uncompromising attacks and subversion until any opposition to socialism is vanquished.</p>
<p>Reimagining Marxism in the 1960s, American radicals coined the phrase, &#8220;The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.&#8221; The militant message remained the same: the revolution is the only absolute moral value, with all other issues relative and subordinate to it.</p>
<p>A typical war cry at any American &#8220;anti-war&#8221; rally starting with the 1960s has been &#8220;No justice, no peace!&#8221; This isn&#8217;t a contradiction: war is only to be opposed if waged by the enemies of socialism. The vision of peace in this case only includes the defeat and surrender of the United States, while the other side is free to invade and murder without a peep from the &#8220;world community.&#8221;</p>
<p>The brainchild of Joseph Stalin, the Western &#8220;peace&#8221; movement of the Cold War era was organized, trained, coordinated, and financed by Soviet intelligence with the purpose of weakening the worldwide resistance by the U.S. and its allies to the Soviet interference in world affairs. Every time a Soviet-backed Marxist group staged a coup, a terror act, or a guerilla attack against a legitimate government anywhere in the world, the &#8220;peace&#8221; movement would spring into action, denouncing the U.S. or NATO efforts to defend their allies. On command, the streets around the world would erupt with self-righteous &#8220;anti-imperialist&#8221; protests and the demands of &#8220;peace&#8221; &#8211; or, more precisely, the end of the opposition to Progressive Chauvinism.</p>
<p>The plan succeeded, most famously, with the U.S. abandoning South Vietnam. America was defeated, not on the battlefield, but in its own streets filled with leftist protesters, with the help from Progressive Chauvinists in the media who willingly promoted made-in-the-USSR propagandistic narrative. Soon afterwards, the Communist North, backed and financed by the USSR, invaded South Vietnam, slaughtering, jailing, and sending to re-education camps millions of formerly free people who opposed their brutal dictatorship. That, in the language of the leftist &#8220;pacifists,&#8221; was peace &#8211; something they celebrated by &#8220;making love, not war.&#8221; One of them was John Kerry, the former &#8220;peace&#8221; activist who is now in charge of America&#8217;s foreign affairs. Hopefully, this clarifies his idea of peace and, for that matter, of war.</p>
<p>Today&#8217;s Democrat Party seems to be re-enacting the old Soviet playbook, practicing the tactics and strategies developed by the Soviet Communists during the Cold War. This includes proactive, relentless, and simultaneous attacks on the opposition in multiple areas; preemptive demonization of the resistance; advancing the notions of &#8220;change&#8221; and &#8220;historical progress&#8221; as a moral obligation of every well-meaning citizen; spreading the perception that the opposition is standing in the way of history; using the media to disseminate prepared supportive narrative; planting disinformation; rewriting history; acting through allegedly neutral proxy organizations; discrediting &#8220;enemy&#8221; media sources; promoting class warfare; stirring strife and division among citizens; provoking conflict while blaming the opposition for a hostile reaction, and so on.</p>
<p>In the meantime, the Republicans are forced to play the role of the anti-communist Western governments: they are constantly caught unawares, ducking the accusations, hectically putting out fires, rushing around and trampling their own, trying to avoid taking the blame but taking it anyway.</p>
<p>On top of it all, the White House, State Department, and DOJ overtly and covertly export revolutions and arm insurgents in world&#8217;s hottest conflict zones, with John Kerry playing the role of U.S. Secretary of State.</p>
<p>The Democrats may as well change their name into a Progressive Chauvinist Party.</p>
<p>The game of &#8220;War and Peace&#8221; however, is only the most immediate, literal implication of their chauvinist moral principle. Tolerance is similarly a one-way street. Progressive Chauvinism assumes that everyone must be tolerant of their opinions and actions, while they retain the right to self-righteous intolerance. Even questioning such a right in polite company is inadvisable lest one be treated as a lower being.</p>
<p>Progressive Chauvinists have thus been able to establish their dominion over all aspects of civil society &#8211; from forcing unionization on individuals and private companies like Wal-Mart to intimidating the banks into issuing subprime mortgages to boycotting Fox News channel to humiliating donors so they would stop supporting non-progressive politicians and organizations &#8211; all without any significant pushback. I have yet to hear of an angry mob picketing the front lawn of a Chicago community organizer.</p>
<p>The chauvinist attitude, of course, is not limited to the left, but it is characteristic of any expansionist totalitarian ideology throughout history. A force that rivals Progressive Chauvinism in today&#8217;s world is <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/oleg-atbashian/this-is-what-islamic-supremacism-looks-like/">Islamic Supremacism</a> &#8211; also known to its victims as the &#8220;religion of peace.&#8221; The attitude is almost identical: in the book of Islamic Supremacism the meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to Islam.</p>
<p>Islamic Supremacists similarly dream of an ideal, egalitarian society of the future &#8211; a global caliphate that will govern over a peaceful world populated by a Muslim majority, while the remaining non-believers would be too intimidated to oppose their Muslim superiors and prefer to pay the jizya &#8211; a special Muslim tax on non-believers, or &#8220;protection money&#8221;- as a condition that they be left in peace.</p>
<p>This allows the Islamic Supremacists to claim with truthful self-righteousness that they stand for peace. An appropriate modifier &#8211; &#8220;eventual peace&#8221; &#8211; would give a more complete picture, however, of what they hope to achieve after the holy jihad wipes out all opposition to Islam.</p>
<p>The worst murderers in recent history didn&#8217;t think of themselves as evil men; they were devoted to their mission and believed that violence was justified by the common good. The real question, after all, is not as much the amount of love as the object of affection.</p>
<p>The National Socialists of the Third Reich were driven, not just by their hatred of Jews and other &#8220;Untermenschen,&#8221; but by an equally strong love of the fairy-tale narrative of the Aryan Supremacy, which inspired them to a higher mission of ruling over the &#8220;inferior nations&#8221; for their own good. The eventual plans to exterminate some of the Slavs and drive the rest of them out of Europe were caused &#8220;only&#8221; by their &#8220;ungrateful&#8221; resistance to the benevolent gift of Germanization.</p>
<p>Today&#8217;s Islamic Supremacists are motivated, not only by hatred of the nonbelievers in general and Israel in particular. They have just as powerful love of their religion, which inspires them with a higher mission of bringing peace to humanity by subjugating it to Islam and ruling over the less fortunate, backward people, who can&#8217;t correctly govern themselves since the only correct form of government is by Sharia law. The terrorist acts and violent jihad are merely an indignant reaction of the righteous and a punishment  to those inferior ingrates who have rejected the light of Islam and no longer deserve to live.</p>
<p>Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Che Guevara, and other notorious communist mass murderers all believed in historically inevitable progress; it justified their right to control the lives of others and sent them on a higher mission to help the welfare of less fortunate by means of dictatorship. Millions of their victims were merely human obstacles on the way to a beloved utopian world of historical progress that sparkled just beyond the mountains of dead bodies. It was the victims&#8217; own fault; no one can stand in the way of history and live.</p>
<p>Different stories, one common denominator: a fairy-tale collectivist narrative that inspires its adepts with a higher mission, relieves of personal responsibility, and brings forth a messianic superiority complex complete with narcissistic, chauvinist attitudes. The stronger ones love this mythical vision, the stronger ones hate the real world with its lowly material concerns that threaten to deflate and discredit the dream.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s the chauvinists&#8217; world, we just live in it.</p>
<p><i>Oleg Atbashian, a writer and graphic artist from the former USSR, is the author of <a href="http://www.shakedownsocialism.com/" target="_blank">Shakedown Socialism</a>, of which David Horowitz said, &#8220;I hope everyone reads this book.&#8221; In 1994 he moved to the U.S. with the hope of living in a country ruled by reason and common sense, but he discovered a nation deeply infected by the leftist disease of &#8220;progressivism.&#8221; His writings and illustrations regularly appear in <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/" target="_blank">FrontPage Mag</a>, <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/" target="_blank">American Thinker</a>, <a href="http://pjmedia.com/" target="_blank">PJ Media</a>, and other popular conservative websites. He is also the creator of a satirical news forum <a href="http://www.thepeoplescube.com/" target="_blank">ThePeoplesCube.com</a>. </i></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Inside Every Liberal Is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out</title>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 22 May 2013 04:48:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bloomberg]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[contest winner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=189984</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Our contest winner and runner-ups are announced.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/inside.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-189991" alt="inside" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/inside.jpg" width="280" height="419" /></a>Frontpage editors are pleased to announce the winner of our <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/1000-essay-and-video-contest-inside-every-liberal-is-a-totalitarian-screaming-to-get-out/">essay contest</a> launched on April 5, 2013: &#8220;Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out.&#8221;</p>
<p>The winner of the $1,000 first-place prize is <strong>N. A. Halkides</strong>. Mr. Halkides is a mathematician, systems analyst and freelance writer living in the greater Chicago metropolitan area. His essay, entitled <em>Inside the Progressive Mind</em>, is below.</p>
<p>Frontpage would also like to applaud two runners-up in the competition: <strong>Oleg Atbashian</strong> and <strong>Daniel Greenfield</strong>. Each of them will receive $500 for winning second-place and their essays will run consecutively in our following two issues.</p>
<p>Congratulations N.A. Halkides, Oleg Atbashian and Daniel Greenfield!</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><b>Inside the Progressive Mind<br />
</b>By N. A. Halkides</p>
<p>The Progressive believes in precisely two things:  his own magnificence and the constructive power of brute force.  In combination, they lead him naturally from the role of pestiferous busybody to brutal dictator.  Where the productive man dreams of the things he might create if only left alone by his fellows, the Progressive dreams of the <i>world</i> he could create if only the lives and property of his fellows were at his disposal.  The roots of his pathology lie in that oldest and most destructive of all human vices, the desire for the power to rule over other men.</p>
<p>As naked power-lust is a rather ugly motive, the Progressive rationalizes his desire to rule as a concern for human welfare, seeing himself as a great humanitarian, far superior morally to the lesser beings who pursue merely “materialist” ends such as their own prosperity and who frequently object to his program for achieving Utopia.  This assumed moral superiority spills over into fields of practical accomplishment, and the Progressive imagines himself capable of allocating resources and even directing entire industries far more efficiently than a free market, often despite not even having any business or scientific experience.  But despite what the Progressive believes about himself, the desire to compel others to obey his orders is what drives him forward.  To satisfy this desire, there is ultimately no limit to what actions he will take, for he respects none of the restrictions on government officials intended to guarantee individual freedom that have been developed and set forth in written or unwritten constitutions.</p>
<p>It is easy to make the mistake of judging Progressivism by its earlier and less-severe manifestations and to conclude that its petty and paternalistic restrictions, for example New York Mayor Michael “The Nanny” Bloomberg’s recent crusade against large-size soda drinks, are simply bothersome annoyances.  In fact the transformation from irritating but superficially benevolent nanny to ruthless dictator not only occurs rather quickly, it is a logical consequence of the Progressive’s zeal to usher in Utopia and of the means he must use to achieve the smallest of his goals &#8211; brute force.  We should recognize the following principle:  <i>Once the Progressive is permitted to intrude however slightly into matters that are properly beyond the sphere of government, then all aspects of the individual’s life may be subjected to control.  Once any degree of coercion is permitted, then no level of force is out of bounds.</i></p>
<p>Let us see how this principle applies to the Bloomberg soda ban.  First, if the government has an interest in regulating the individual’s behavior in the name of assuring his health, no private decision the individual makes which could affect his health is beyond its power to control.  (If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the “broccoli” argument that was raised in the court challenge of Obamacare by twenty-six states).  Second, since the government is to be permitted to use force to override the individual’s will, then it may use as much force as necessary to compel his obedience.  The punishment of merchants who refused to obey the Bloomberg ban was to be a $200 fine, which on the surface would probably not be thought of as extreme.  Note, however that this fine would probably have been sufficient to cause most restaurants to toe the line, and if it had proved inadequate there is no reason to believe Bloomberg would not have increased it to the point that no one would risk violating his edict.</p>
<p>If Bloomberg’s soda ban had been upheld (it was set aside by a judge during a rare moment when sanity prevailed in New York), the city could then have logically gone on to fine obese individuals or incarcerate them in “fat farms” where they would be forced to reduce, since nothing in principle would prevent this, and only the degree of public resistance might stand in the way of the ambitious politician determined to bring about these “superior health outcomes” &#8211; to use the modern technocrat’s jargon.  What specifically the Progressive attempts to control depends on his personal inclinations and just how far he senses he can push the general public.  Any weakness or lack of determination by the average citizen in resisting the nascent tyrant encourages him to push even further, whereas a determined resistance will often convince him to micro-manage some other aspect of our lives until a more propitious moment arrives to advance his original plan.  But in no case is the Progressive held back by any trace of self-restraint.</p>
<p>Now, packing unwilling citizens off to fat farms is only an example of how the Progressive <i>might</i> begin to move from “soft” to “hard” tyranny.  Do we have any examples in contemporary American politics in which Progressives have actually attempted something this obnoxious to personal liberty?  Consider the following characteristics of a “hard” tyranny such as Nazi Germany, the old Soviet Union, or Communist China today:</p>
<p><strong>[1] Press Censorship</strong> &#8211; all media state controlled and opinions of which the government does not approve become punishable offenses.</p>
<p><strong>[2] Complete Gun Control</strong> – only agents of the state are permitted to possess arms.</p>
<p><strong>[3] One-Party Rule</strong> – this means an enforced hegemony, where if opposition parties are permitted to exist at all they are placed at such an extreme disadvantage they cannot truly challenge the ruling party.</p>
<p><strong>[4]</strong> <strong>Control of the Nation’s Economy.</strong></p>
<p>Let’s take these four one at a time and see what, if anything, Progressives have attempted along those specific lines.</p>
<p><strong>[1] Press Censorship</strong> – in 2012, House Minority Leader <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/analysis-pelosi-endorsed-amendment-could-ban-free-press-freedom-of-religion">Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats proposed</a> gutting the First Amendment by removing its protections from citizens who band together to form corporations. This means that while an individual citizen might still literally get on his soap box and attack the government, publishers of newspapers, magazines, books, and web sites could be shut down by the ruling party.</p>
<p><strong>[2] Complete Gun Control</strong> – while some of the more radical Progressives within the Democrat Party openly call for complete confiscation (New York Governor Andrew Cuomo considered the possibility in the run-up to the State’s infamous SAFE Act), most recognize the political danger that such a stand would put them in, and therefore advocate what they soothingly refer to as “common-sense” regulations meant to get us to the point of confiscation in slow and easy steps.  For example, Barack Obama pretends to believe in the 2<sup>nd</sup> Amendment, although we may well doubt that his views have changed from his days as an adjunct lecturer at the University of Chicago where he told John Lott that he didn’t believe Americans should be able to own guns.  Mayor Bloomberg himself has recently turned his attention from oversize soft drinks to gun control, confirming the tendency of the Progressive to go from nanny to tyrant.</p>
<p><strong>[3] One-Party Rule</strong> – Progressive Democrats have not moved to officially ban other political parties, but the fact that in many cities and states Republicans can no longer win control of either the legislative or executive branches of government under any foreseeable circumstances is extremely troubling.  A full analysis would be too lengthy to present here, but it appears that in at least some of these places, Democrats have secured a permanent governing majority in every election by means of special favors and income redistribution.  Republicans cannot match Democrats there except by playing the same game and in effect becoming Democrats themselves.  Under such conditions, there is no need to officially ban the GOP.</p>
<p><strong>[4] Control of the Nation’s Economy</strong> – the purpose of Obamacare was plainly to take control of one-sixth of the nation’s economy rather than improve health care or health insurance.  The other major bill the Democrats passed when they had the chance early in Obama’s first term was Dodd-Frank, which increased the Federal Government’s control of the financial sector to a degree unprecedented in our nation’s history.  Given the opportunity, there can be little doubt that Progressive Democrats would bring additional areas of the economy under the control of the government.</p>
<p>Let me reiterate that once government is permitted to use force at all in a given matter, <i>any</i> degree of force is allowed.  Bloomberg’s $200 “big gulp” fine, as noted earlier, may not seem draconian, but turning an innocent citizen into a felon for merely possessing a standard-size gun magazine certainly does.   We can only guess at what penalties Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Progressives would have imposed on those bold enough to criticize them had they been successful at sweeping away the First Amendment, but as the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act (an earlier attempt to limit free speech) provided for both fines and imprisonment, it is safe to say those penalties would have been quite heavy enough, and that inside every Progressive beats the heart of a true fascist.  And what is perhaps most frightening of all is that in the age of Obama, they’re not even trying very hard to hide it any more.</p>
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