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Sooner Or Later Progressives Will Get Around To You
Townhall.com ^ | March 17, 2013 | Derek Hunter

Posted on 03/17/2013 1:35:00 AM PDT by Kaslin

First, they came for the smokers.

No one would argue smoking is good for you. But it’s legal; growing tobacco is even subsidized by the government. Yet, when governments started limiting the right of people to smoke in places public and private, non-smokers did nothing. They didn’t like smoke; they’d heard second-hand smoke was dangerous. Why should they allow owners of private establishments to choose whether those establishments allowed people to engage in a legal – in fact, subsidized -- activity?

Then, they came to “clean up” the healthcare mess. They would take the sick and poor off our hands. We would no longer have to join together as a community to provide for those who can’t provide for themselves; dear, benevolent government would do this for us. First, with Medicare for the old. Then, with Medicaid for the poor. Then, the definition of poor would expand … and expand … and expand ... and nobody would speak up because who wants to come out against the old, the sick and the poor?

And then it wasn’t just the poor. It also was the uninsured. Some were uninsured because they were unemployed. Others because their income level didn’t permit them to buy health insurance. Can’t be for allowing them to just hang there. No convincing evidence they were dying in the streets or were significantly underserved by the healthcare system regardless of their health insurance status. And plenty had the money to buy health insurance and chose not to.

But hey, when you’re a Progressive, and you’ve tried for a half-century to take over health care, who are you to let minor details such as this stand in the way? And when you get your chance – so much disaffection with a spendthrift Republican president that Democrats could grab control of both houses of Congress and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, you grab that chance and you pass the most sweeping Progressive legislation since the New Deal – Obamacare.

And when the rest of us find we can’t afford our health insurance because of all the new requirements placed on it by our Progressive friends and their enlightened legislation, nobody can do much more than complain. Who defends greedy insurance companies? Who defends faceless corporations when costs finally reach the point where they drop their plans, forcing their employers into the Obamacare system where Progressives have wanted them all along, or even drop their employees?

The secret is the impact is felt gradually. It’s like a boa constrictor. By the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late.

Now, they come for our guns. It’s for our own good. Otherwise, we’ll have more school shootings, such as the terrible incident in Connecticut. Never mind the guns used that day were stolen. We hear about the need Newtown illustrates to limit weapons and ammunition clips that can fire several rounds per minute. We are never reminded the killer at Newtown shot 24 people in 22 minutes. Speed or power of the weapon was not an issue. One person somewhere in that school with a weapon would’ve saved many lives.

But most of us don’t think of those details, and we don’t own guns … particularly the geniuses in Washington who make these decisions. So we don’t complain sufficiently, and the Progressive agenda advances.

They also have come for the rich people. I’m not rich; what do I care if the rich get taxed a little more? Never mind that I might like to be rich one day or that almost certainly a rich person pays my salary. Never mind what it might mean to him paying salaries that his taxes keep going up. He is indefensible. He’s taken more than his fair share. Tax him. And tax him some more. And when that’s not enough, tax the rest of us … but do it in a way we don’t really see it. Not income taxes. Payroll taxes. They’re gone before we even get our checks.

If there’s one thing progressives love it’s a power grab in the name of “doing good,” and the “good” they most often wrap themselves in is “for the children.” When they eventually discover the “good” they sought to accomplish by quashing a little piece of our personal liberty did not come to pass, they never reverse course and retract their government intrusion. Instead, they offer a solution that seizes a little bit more. It’s a never-ending cycle of self-fulfilling prophecies, a Yellow Brick Road that leads to an Emerald Prison of mini-tyrannies populated by a disconnected people who stood by doing nothing because the power government was exerting did not affect them.

But sooner or later government will run out of other people to tax, other things to ban, other choices to regulate and, like a caged tiger, it will turn on the hand that feeds it. It’s its nature.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn’t want his people to be fat. So he tried to ban “sugary beverages larger than 16 ounces” but was rebuffed by a court, at least temporarily. Progressives do not quit, or get deterred, when voters reject their ideas, what chance does a court have?

He’s now going after Styrofoam containers to leave a “better” planet for the children. This will lead to higher costs to restaurants, which will lead to higher prices for customers. Customers will ignore it or blame the restaurants. There’s always another kabuki dance.

What do the non-rich care if taxes were raised on people who were not them? What do those with health insurance care if government enacts a requirement that everyone who doesn’t have it buy health insurance?

Tyranny seldom comes all at once, it comes slowing, incrementally, in small doses cloaked as something else, something good. Each thread appears innocuous and unimportant but is part of a tapestry rarely recognized as what it is until too late.

You may not care about any of the targets progressives are pursuing now or in the near future, but they will run out of things you don’t care about before they run out of will to control. Sooner or later they will come after something you like or do. If you sit by do nothing as the individual liberty of others is continually limited, you’d better hope there are enough people left able and willing to speak up when they get around to you.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: healthcare; nannystate; progressives; secondamendment
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To: Pontiac
. They are shaping the minds of our youth....
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

And....Day after government school day, conservatives and those who still have Judeo-Christian beliefs let them.

Of all the weapons that the left uses against those cherishing freedom, socialist-entitlement and godless schooling is their most powerful. They are our nation's **most** serious threat to freedom.

Why is it that others do not see the danger or do not share my urgency that these indoctrination camps must be shut down?

Personally, I have made a decision. I shun government teachers and the workers who make these indoctrination camps possible. They are either too evil, too stupid, or too much of a Useful Idiot to be a friend. ( I don't have abortion workers for friends, either.)

21 posted on 03/17/2013 5:51:06 AM PDT by wintertime
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To: MadMax, the Grinning Reaper

Unfortunately, your relatives were warned too.


22 posted on 03/17/2013 5:57:48 AM PDT by Solson (The Voters stole the election! And the establishment wants it back.)
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To: wintertime
Why is it that others do not see the danger or do not share my urgency that these indoctrination camps must be shut down?

Because the Left has always known that those who love God were their most dangerous enemy.

The blessings that God bestowed upon this country have made it so affluent that few ever need seeks the aid of God’s church. Today obesity is a disease of the poor.

Those who once would seek release from their plight in God’s grace now seek their daily bread from the government.

The Left has enlisted the sybarites of the entertainment industry to assist them in to changing our countrymen in to vulgar beast that neither fear god nor respect his teaching.

The Left know their enemy and have long studied the ways to remove Him from the hearts of men.

Once God has been pushed out of a mans heart the Left can fill that space with evil and that man is subdued and he no longer cares for the challenges that come with Liberty.

23 posted on 03/17/2013 6:46:57 AM PDT by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit.)
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To: freepertoo
I saw the third movie, too, but don’t like to admit it). That was enough. :-D

That was the point when Darth Lucas refocused the power of the Dark Side of the Force on toy sales - a goal that persisted until he hired no less than Tom Stoppard to help him with the screenplay for the sixth movie. But the power of the Dark Side remained too strong, and consumed him. :)

24 posted on 03/17/2013 6:56:15 AM PDT by Mr. Jeeves (CTRL-GALT-DELETE)
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To: clearcarbon

25 posted on 03/17/2013 7:37:23 AM PDT by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: Travis McGee

Wow! What a video.

I see that it has had over 35,000 hits. Knowing You Tube, the real number of hits is likely many times that.


26 posted on 03/17/2013 9:27:13 AM PDT by wintertime
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To: Kaslin
If you sit by do nothing as the individual liberty of others is continually limited,

IF?? There's no "if" about it. Everyone is sitting by doing nothing as the liberty of others is limited, whether gradually or not.

you’d better hope there are enough people left able and willing to speak up when they get around to you.

There won't be. The Founding Fathers did not wait for the forces of the King to "get around to" particular individuals. People are lying to themselves and one another, to say they will start resisting at some future moment and some specific, imagined violation of their rights. They will never successfully resist alone, they would of a certainty die if they did. They will never resist in organized numbers, because they haven't yet done so and the tyranny is already on our land.

And that's referring to the violent resistance. But people aren't even interested in non-violent resistance, which would be far better and much faster and likelier to succeed.

Starving the beast, defunding the tyrants who cannot operate without revenue, is just too inconvenient.

The Founding Fathers risked their very lives, without waiting for soldiers to come to their personal doorsteps. They put down their plows and picked up their muskets and went OUT to defeat the enemy. We, today, don't want to consider even the smallest sacrifice. And we don't want to consider what that means.

27 posted on 03/17/2013 10:13:42 AM PDT by HomeAtLast ( You're either with the Tea Party, or you're with the EBT Party.)
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To: wintertime
Thanks. I sure hope so! Here's another, only 30 seconds, that the NRA made.


28 posted on 03/17/2013 7:22:28 PM PDT by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: Pontiac

There is an old saying. “A Thousand throats can be cut in a single night by a running man”...


29 posted on 03/17/2013 9:36:17 PM PDT by BigCinBigD (...Was that okay?)
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To: wintertime
Why is it that others do not see the danger or do not share my urgency

Possibly because you're a nut case.

30 posted on 03/22/2013 7:47:27 AM PDT by humblegunner
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To: humblegunner

Please do not sent messages to my ping page. However....feel free to comment in any manner on my posts and threads ( even using my name) .

Respectfully and politely,

Wintertime


31 posted on 03/22/2013 1:26:13 PM PDT by wintertime
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To: Kaslin
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn’t want his people to be fat.

But he has no trouble with their being short?

Discrimination!

32 posted on 03/22/2013 1:37:42 PM PDT by x
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To: wintertime

Replying to you in any thread automatically “sends a message to your ping page” ie informing you of a new reply. That’s built in to the forum.


33 posted on 03/22/2013 6:40:20 PM PDT by corlorde (forWARD of the state)
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