I see people telling the left these days, “See, this is why you should support limited government!”
Friends, I appreciate your zeal. But it is misplaced.
Ever since the French Revolution, the birth of the left as we know it, the left — yes, yes, with exceptions — has been about one thing: social reconstruction at the point of a gun.
And all the while they somehow pose as victims, even as they work to destroy the lives of anyone who stands in their path.
A reasonable person would indeed stop and say, “Huh. Maybe I shouldn’t have hypocritically looked the other way while Barack Obama acquiesced in and even expanded horrifying executive powers no president should have.”
Glenn Greenwald, one of my exceptions, is trying to tell the left this:
“Obama not only continued many of the most extreme executive-power policies he once condemned, but in many cases strengthened and extended them. His administration detained terrorism suspects without due process, proposed new frameworks to keep them locked up without trial, targeted thousands of individuals (including a U.S. citizen) for execution by drone, invoked secrecy doctrines to shield torture and eavesdropping programs from judicial review, and covertly expanded the nation’s mass electronic surveillance.
“Blinded by the belief that Obama was too benevolent and benign to abuse his office, and drowning in partisan loyalties at the expense of political principles, Democrats consecrated this framework with their acquiescence and, often, their explicit approval. This is the unrestrained set of powers Trump will inherit. The president-elect frightens them, so they are now alarmed. But if they want to know whom to blame, they should look in the mirror.”
They won’t. Because the state is their god.
The state created everything out of nothing, and saw that it was good.
The state is the source of all progress in the world.
The state is where we should look for inspiration, for encouragement; each of us ought to listen with rapt attention to “my president.” (How that “not my president” meme makes me shudder, by the way — not so much for the “not” as for the exceptionally creepy “my president.”)
They are not giving up on their religion.
A sudden conversion to limited government, moreover, would mean an abandonment of the left’s very raison d’etre: permanent revolution, carried out via coercion.
But Woods, you say, some people on the West Coast are talking secession.
That’s all to the good, though it again shows that these people have no principles except whatever makes them happy.
Anyone else talking secession has been dismissed as a racist “neo-Confederate” (whatever that’s supposed to mean).
But of course these people are precious snowflakes with pure intentions, so they may hold unconventional opinions without fear of repercussion.
They see no problem with demanding that their opponents accept election results with dignity and grace, while protesting and rioting when they themselves face an unhappy election result.
No principles. Just whatever benefits them.
They have made up stories of a wave of hate crimes sweeping the nation. Even Reason magazine, which despises Trump, published a piece this week exposing this as fake.
Again, no principles. Lies are acceptable if they advance the revolution.
Or: let’s demand that everyone accept the existence of 70 “gender identities” — for which precisely zero scientific evidence exists — and (as is happening in New York City) punish them if they do not go along.
Do these seem like nice people who simply have mistaken views of government? Are we dealing with debatable matters of “public policy” here?
No, it isn’t metaphysically impossible for a committed leftist to have a change of heart, and I’m delighted when it happens. But in my experience it’s vastly less common for leftists than it is for conservatives to become libertarians. I think there is a reason for that.
The longer these leftist antics go on, whether on the streets or the campuses, the more the public will be educated on the precise nature of the totalitarian impulse behind leftism.
So do your worst, snowflakes.
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