The Long Shadow of the Third Reich

SEE HERE Tyranny has a way of creeping up on you. The political discourse in the United States has turned totally poisonous. I'm not sure how or why it has happened, but it has. The polarization is extreme between the current crop of liberal-progressives who seem to really be simply a kind of neo-marxists. They have a whole litany of cardboard enemies that they call names and ascribe bad motives to. Mostly they seem to think the rich should be forced to pay for everything because they are greedy manipulators or something. Don't get me wrong because there are a whole bunch of equal crazies on the right although frankly they're closer to the liberal-progressives than you might think. They think that the rich and powerful are conspiring to create a world state.

There doesn't seem to be much room for those of us who are just vanilla patriots who think that government has grown too big and too irresponsible and that it is crushing the rights and freedoms that we value as Americans. I think it's been over the top for a long time. The idea that I have to fasten my seat-belt under penalty or have to have a car seat for my kids is the imposition of the government in private matters that are of no legitimate concern of theirs. This has come to be called the "nanny state" and it is a form of soft-tyranny. The tyranny is of someone who is uninvolved with you insisting that you do things for your own good that are prudential matters. I'm not suggesting that it isn't a good idea to buckle up or to have a car seat for your infant. I'm suggesting that the government has no warrant to impose it as a requirement. Once these things started there has seemed to be no limit to them. Now the food police are out to impose their particular idea of healthy on you regardless of whether you want it. People are too fat. I'm one of them. I don't need to be told that I should lose weight. But since when is that a government matter, especially a federal government matter?

The problem with soft-tyranny is that it is a creeping form of hard tyranny. We're starting to seem more and more impositions of some trendy idea for our own good. When the strait-jacket is finally clipped into place and you wonder where your freedom went, just look back on this history of the growth of government. Freedom isn't free and demand the most continual vigilance.