As Ken Kratz would say: Blaska's Blog is the prize!
I am not a big Glenn Beck fan but he is onto something with his deconstruction of the progressive movement. It is the movement that denied adults the pleasures of drink by force of law. That sponsored the racial eugenics of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. That mandated the 55 mph speed limit on rural Interstate highways. It was for our own good.
Progressivism's operating principal is that science and enlightened thinking must rule the brutish masses of people -- to hell with the consent of the governed, they're too stupid.
It is the "science" of global warming that justifies government interference in every walk of life through cap and trade (cap and tax). (I've already spoken of the state-mandated eco-fascism of Britain's 10/10 campaign to cut carbon emissions. It is not happenstance that the message relies on coercion, not persuasion. Step out of line and you're liquidated.) The progressive agenda would deprive individuals of their firearms. The progressives now crusade to circumscribe, license, and ration political speech.
We, the people cannot be trusted to make our own decisions.
Jonah Goldberg has written that progressivism is fascism with a smiley face. He defines fascism as the quasi-religious belief that:
the state needs to be, almost simply as a pragmatic matter, the pace-setter, the enforcer of this cult of unity. [Quoting Mussolini] "Everything in the state, nothing outside the state." [Salon: 01-11-08]
Progressives cannot understand why the American people will not be regulated, why they will not be collectivized, why they will not be redistributed. The contrarian spirit of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett survives. That is why Obamacare is so unpopular, why cap 'n trade could not be enacted even when Democrats ruled the roost in both Madison and Washington. Why Americans resist the notion that government can spend their money more wisely than they. Why 46 of Dane County's 61 communities will hold their own referenda on commuter rail and damn the downtown Madison intelligentsia.
None of the experts saw it coming: the tea parties, the town halls, Chris Christie or Scott Brown. Certainly, Ron Johnson came out of nowhere -- his own former Republican state senator from Oshkosh told me she had not known him -- to take an eight-point lead over an 18-year incumbent "progressive."
Sadly, where Russ Feingold has been a "maverick" is to buck his party in favor of even more regulation.
That is the meaning of the "Don't tread on me" flag. It does not say, "Don't tread on us."
The Founders' Compass
My friend Nancy Mistele has more courage than a skydiver in grizzly country.
She took on The Kathleen when no one else dared. She spoke truth to the teachers union when a member of the Madison School Board. She epitomizes the independent spirit of the tea party. "Change starts with us, it begins with the individual," Nancy says.
Indeed, Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1789: "What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals."
Now, Nancy says, "Freedom has a new home on the Internet."
Nancy Mistele is launching TheFoundersCompass.com, which she describes as "a virtual hub for members of the fast-growing Tea Party movement. A one-stop shop for people to get involved and get active or as I like to say 'Freedom at your fingertips.'"
Please visit TheFoundersCompass.com
His campaign ain't none of our business?
The minister of hate
San Franciscans try to take back their streets
The sit-lie law is about more than business viability, however important such viability is to a city's lifeblood and energy. It is also about the basic rules of a civilized society, which include the idea that public spaces should be shared by the public, not monopolized by the disorderly few. [Wall Street Journal 10-2-10
Got socialism?
