David

Karki

Read David's bio and previous columns here

March 24, 2008

Fighting the Left’s Control Agenda

In my last column, I talked about how the real agenda behind liberal policies is control – control of you and your life, in all its aspects. There is simply nothing safe from this agenda – from the more picayune things, such as the type of light bulbs in your lamps at home or whether you can have a smoke, to the big things like where you can live and what type of vehicle you can drive (if any at all).

You might be asking, especially if you don't care about incandescent versus compact fluorescent, or don't smoke, or don't drive, why any of this is a big deal. These don't seem to be such major encroachments, after all. And there are benefits from these outcomes. But incidental noble ends do not and cannot justify, and therefore must be separated from, the immoral means.

Nothing is more precious than liberty –  the right and freedom to make choices for oneself and fully accept responsibility for the consequences. That the end of government control may ultimately prove beneficial in some respects – which happens nowhere near as often as liberals like to think or would have you believe – is not the point. The point is that once you allow government to presume to choose for you how your life shall be lived, in any detail, in principle your freedom is gone. And that is more detrimental, by far, than any other superficial gain is desirable.

Or, to quote James Madison: "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

He was correct. The left, incrementally but relentlessly, demonizes things simply because it's easier to control that which is unpopular. And with every item they pull into their orbit, the area left free decreases. Then their eye moves to the next target. So even if you don't smoke and don't like cigarettes (as I do not), you should passionately defend the property and freedom-of-association rights of bar owners to choose for themselves to which clientele they will cater (as I do).

Or, to paraphrase Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous poem about the rise of the Nazis: 

"In America, liberals came first for the smokers, and I didn’t speak up because I didn't like smoking;

And then liberals came for the incandescent light bulbs, and I didn’t speak up because I thought CF bulbs better;

And then liberals came for the global warming skeptics, and I didn’t speak up because I didn't like SUVs;

And then . . . liberals came for me . . . and by that time there was no one left to speak up."  

The above may sound over-the-top, but if government can stomp on a bar owner's clear constitutional rights and suffer no rebuke, ban light bulbs outright and suffer no rebuke, promote the outright fraud of global warming for the express purpose of radically remaking society over in a Marxist image and suffer no rebuke, how can you naively presume it will ever stop of its own accord and that you won't be next? When one of us has our liberty curtailed, we are all injured. And we should respond accordingly. 

The last and perhaps biggest question is also the simplest: Why? Why is there this seemingly insatiable and utterly relentless drive by some to control their fellow man so completely? Do they have some kind of fetish for The Borg on Star Trek? 

The answer, I believe, is as old as mankind itself. Adam and Eve ate the fruit because the lying serpent appealed to their ego, convincing them that they would be powerful like God and that this was an entitlement that God was unfairly refusing to share with them. So it is with liberals. They have become consumed by their egos, to the point where they think the natural order of things is for them to be in charge with, in essence, God-like power (known as government) sufficient to control even the weather. Simply put, they've eaten the fruit. Some of them may be downright fruit-a-holics. 

This is an inherent part of humanity, and in the innate nature of us all. But where some of us exercise humility, the left just keeps pushing in the same direction, full of arrogance and hubris. That's why the answer to the failure of liberal ideas is always more – more taxes, more spending, more regulation, more litigation – and never less. More feeds the fruit-addled ego. Less induces humility.  

It also shows that expecting government to stop its inexorable creep, and liberty and freedom to reign all by themselves, is foolish in the extreme. That only happens when we fight for it – fight against our own ego-driven selfish instincts, and fight against others who've already lost that inner struggle. And we have no less than a  duty to do so. To quote the Declaration of Independence: 

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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