North Star Writers Group

Most of us remember well that night in November 1989, when East and West Germans danced upon the Berlin Wall as the Iron Curtain finally fell and communist tyranny's grip on eastern Europe was broken. The flags of the former Soviet Union and its satellite nations became quaint collector's items. What used to be most frightening turned into tourist attractions. Communism was thought by many to be a relic, saved for history books and museums, certainly never to be seen in real life again. Some even thought "the end of history" was nigh at hand.

What a naive and arrogant presumption that turned out to be. Capitalism, free markets, private property and liberty are under attack as never before, even without a former main sponsor in the Soviet Union. From the more obvious examples, like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, to subtler ones within the United States itself, the forces of government control over free individuals are more emboldened than ever. And like the frog in a pot of water, we may slowly boil to death before realizing just how hot it really is getting to be. Consider:

Immigration. Support the mass normalization of some 20 million illegals, no matter how criminal their backgrounds and incalculable their expense may be, or you're a racist Klansman. If you dare mention anything about the meaning of citizenship or an American identity (as opposed to being a "global citizen") you're branded as exclusionary or a "nationalist." And if you want to emigrate to escape this, you're still subject to all U.S. taxes for a decade thereafter. So even if you try to opt out, you still are forced to pay for it.

Environment. Unless you want to live in inner city high-rise condos, ride trains everywhere and ration resource consumption, you want to murder Bambi and make Earth broil. And forget about ever building anything new, thanks to "smart growth" policies, which are really a simple case of land rationing and the evisceration of private property. Not to mention that food prices are going up as corn is diverted to ethanol production thanks to government bribing agribusiness with subsidies. It probably won't be much longer before we'll all have to get an environmental impact study on methane emissions done every time we cut a fart, just to be sure we aren't causing global warming by eating too many beans.

Taxation. Happily fork over one-third of your hard-earned income or you're "greedy." Never mind that you're only wanting to keep what's yours, while government is the one stealing what belongs to others. And pay government its tax on your property, or they'll come take that away too. Hmm, sounds more like renting to me. And don't even think about dying, or 55 percent of everything you've earned that hasn't already been taxed away will be seized before rigor mortis can set in.

The list goes on, but I trust the point is already crystal clear. There is simply nothing about your life that the far left doesn't want to control, force upon you or seize from you. Lawbreakers are going to be made citizens and outvote you so as to keep incumbents re-elected for life, while you pay all their itinerant expenses for the privilege. Suburbs and the automobile will be outlawed and personal consumption forcibly curtailed for the con artistry of "global warming". Your money and property will be blatantly stolen under the phony guise of "compassion." Nothing about your life is too minor or picayune for the new communists to think they can do it better than you and therefore should dictate how you can do it – or if you can do it at all.

And should you dare speak out about any of this, you are hit with the most vicious slanders, bullying and intimidation imaginable. Just look at the epithets – racist, bigoted, environmental rapist, greedy, mean-spirited, etc. This is the language of someone hell-bent on implementing their agenda and destroying anyone who gets in the way. Perhaps most ironic of all is that these same folks wax rhapsodic about "choice" when it comes to aborting unborn babies, but don't want anyone to be free to choose anything else for themselves for the rest of their lives. And that totalitarian control is the real goal here – not compassion or global warming or any of the other fraudulent canards the left uses in its effort.

Just trying to be left alone is a real challenge these days, which brings me back to that wall. It may be one thing to charge an "exit fee" for emigrating (though if jacked up high enough, it acts as a "virtual wall" itself, just as poll taxes once prevented the poor from voting), but ask yourself this: If some subset of Americans decided they'd had enough of this and wanted to declare independence and begin anew as their own nation, do you really think they'd be peaceably let go? Especially when the loss of their tax revenue would deal a crippling blow to the nanny state? Before you answer, read the quote below:

“An uninsured person who goes to the hospital is more likely to die than an insured person. I mean, that is a fact. So what do we do? We have to build a political consensus. And that requires people to give up a little bit of their own turf in order to create this common ground. The same with energy. You know, we can’t keep talking about our dependence on foreign oil and the need to deal with global warming and the challenge that it poses to our climate and to God’s creation and just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people.” – Sen. Hillary Clinton, June 4, 2007

Something has to be taken away from some people - namely freedom and liberty. Karl Marx himself couldn't have put it more starkly. If that border wall ever does get built, it might just be meant not to keep illegal immigrants out but Americans in.

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This is Column # DKK064. Request permission to publish here.