Post by jobs1stb4polarbear on Jun 21, 2012 14:56:35 GMT -5
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”--C.S. Lewis
It must be such fun to be one of a growing class of politicians that I will refer to as "postmodern busybodies"!
Imagine, if you will, the heady sense of power over others that comes with the job. You even get to tell people what to eat!
This behavior is nothing more than a bit of annoyingly intrusive narcissism displayed by a variety of politically postmodern progressive individuals and groups, whose goal is not to persuade you that their ideas are correct or even better than yours; but to force you to accept their ideas by make them laws.
We used to contemptuously call such people busybodies (which was not a compliment), and were mostly able to ignore their nitpicking power plays to control or change our lives.
Sadly, we can't do that anymore.
These a$$holes are everywhere. They are in the Democrat and Republican Party (but mostly the former); they are in the chattering classes and media; they are the elites of Hollywood.
We listen to their advice on everything from what car to buy to what deodorant to wear.
Mathhew Yglesias over at the busybody blog called "Think Progress" (actually, don't think at all--they always know what's best for you) thinks that the "trouble" with America is that we don't give our children good enough school lunches.
thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/11/18/371992/school-lunch-and-the-trouble-with-america/?mobile=nc
We give them Pizza. Oh the horror! Clearly this is the reason America is in decline!
I mock them, but Yglesias and his progressive compatriots are true believers in the soft, compassionate tyranny of the nanny state.
Their touching confidence that the government will keep us all healthy and safe from the evils of the world (or, at least the evil of pizza for lunch) is amusing, albeit misplaced. We can laugh at Yglesias because he is merely an impotent A$$hole.
But his kind of busybody do-goodism is rather less amusing when it emanates from the people who are currently running our government at the local, state and national levels.
Most congresscritters, be they Democrat or Republican, have never met a government program they didn't like, as long as it helps them get elected or re-elected. “Promise the Suckers Anything!” (Suckers=Us). And, of course, human nature being what it is, every single one of us are enthusiastically willing to take something when it is promised to us for nothing.
But, their ready and contradictory promises aren’t without consequences. And, they cost somewhat more than nothing.
There are two problems here. The first is how we the people casually shrug off any personal responsibility and abdicate our self-reliance and freedoms. If we do it often enough; eventually we will develop an enlarged sense of entitlement to other people's money and effort. Soon we will be caught up in aggrieved victimhood, when the gravy train stops. If you doubt this, then wake up and take note of what is happening in Europe today (and watch carefully the results of the Greek election). In EU fantasyland, people demand that everything go on as usual and that they continue to receive what was "promised" to them by their own self-absorbed and anti-reality politicians.
NOTE: Pretending that the real world doesn't exist is rather infantile—and completely narcissistic.
The second problem is the (supposedly) grown-up narcissists we the people elect to Congress who do the promising, and then refuse to face either external reality (we are going broke and running out of other people’s money to pay for it all) or internal reality (they glory in the power they have over us AND, amazingly, they always profit mightily from it).
Another example of narcissism for fun and profit in the 21st century.
From regulating and taxing the gasoline that goes into your car and the emissions that come out; from state seatbelt laws; all the federal warning labels on cigarettes (the new requirements are absolutely horrifying literally and figuratively 54, all anyone seems to want to do anymore is to micromanage everyone else's behavior.
Local school districts ban dodge ball and tag; ban peanuts from school; Congress mandates what kind of light bulbs to use; what drugs are legal and what drugs are not; whether you can gamble or have church services in your own home.
www.nytimes.com/2001/05/06/us/increasingly-schools-move-to-restrict-dodgeball.html
www.alliancedefensefund.org/Home/ADFContent?cid=5229
The list goes to infinity and beyond.
There is no end to what these postmodern busybodies try to control about your life and your choices. And the farther up the government food chain you go--from the local level to the federal level--the worse it gets.
Ironically, these are the same people who are presumably "pro-choice" and champion "abortion rights" and a Woman's right to choose, arguing that, since it is her body, she gets to kill the fetus if she doesn't want it. But never mind all that when it comes to athletes who want to use performance enhancing drugs. Isn't it their body? So what if I want to "defile" my body by eating pizza with 16 oz sodas for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
Ahhh, they smile happily. You gave up that right when you told us you wanted the government to manage health care. When you shirked your responsibility to take the consequences of your behavior. Now WE have to control that behavior! Of course, we'll do a much better job of it than you would anyway.
Yes, these crusaders for peace and social justice and bans on cigarettes are everywhere, but they are scariest when we ourselves give them the power to make us into children and act out their parental fantasies for our own good.
Take Nanny Pelosi, whose every action is loudly proclaimed" for the children!"—or, so she tells us. Her latest gambit is to “do for childcare what we did for healthcare.”
hotair.com/archives/2011/11/18/pelosi-proclaims-her-goal-to-do-for-childcare-what-we-did-for-healthcare/
Soon, no child care provider will be safe from her intrusive, busybody nanny-statism.
Or, take Barney Frank (please), whose sincere devotion to social justice when he was overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac directly led to the housing crisis.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPSDnGMzIdo
Now, of course, he claims it was all the Republicans’ fault because they didn’t stop him from his madness.
In a rational and yes, a "just" society, these busybodies would be laughed at. In a society that valued self reliance and personal responsibility, they would rightly be considered idiots.
It must be such fun to be one of a growing class of politicians that I will refer to as "postmodern busybodies"!
Imagine, if you will, the heady sense of power over others that comes with the job. You even get to tell people what to eat!
This behavior is nothing more than a bit of annoyingly intrusive narcissism displayed by a variety of politically postmodern progressive individuals and groups, whose goal is not to persuade you that their ideas are correct or even better than yours; but to force you to accept their ideas by make them laws.
We used to contemptuously call such people busybodies (which was not a compliment), and were mostly able to ignore their nitpicking power plays to control or change our lives.
Sadly, we can't do that anymore.
These a$$holes are everywhere. They are in the Democrat and Republican Party (but mostly the former); they are in the chattering classes and media; they are the elites of Hollywood.
We listen to their advice on everything from what car to buy to what deodorant to wear.
Mathhew Yglesias over at the busybody blog called "Think Progress" (actually, don't think at all--they always know what's best for you) thinks that the "trouble" with America is that we don't give our children good enough school lunches.
thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/11/18/371992/school-lunch-and-the-trouble-with-america/?mobile=nc
We give them Pizza. Oh the horror! Clearly this is the reason America is in decline!
I mock them, but Yglesias and his progressive compatriots are true believers in the soft, compassionate tyranny of the nanny state.
Their touching confidence that the government will keep us all healthy and safe from the evils of the world (or, at least the evil of pizza for lunch) is amusing, albeit misplaced. We can laugh at Yglesias because he is merely an impotent A$$hole.
But his kind of busybody do-goodism is rather less amusing when it emanates from the people who are currently running our government at the local, state and national levels.
Most congresscritters, be they Democrat or Republican, have never met a government program they didn't like, as long as it helps them get elected or re-elected. “Promise the Suckers Anything!” (Suckers=Us). And, of course, human nature being what it is, every single one of us are enthusiastically willing to take something when it is promised to us for nothing.
But, their ready and contradictory promises aren’t without consequences. And, they cost somewhat more than nothing.
There are two problems here. The first is how we the people casually shrug off any personal responsibility and abdicate our self-reliance and freedoms. If we do it often enough; eventually we will develop an enlarged sense of entitlement to other people's money and effort. Soon we will be caught up in aggrieved victimhood, when the gravy train stops. If you doubt this, then wake up and take note of what is happening in Europe today (and watch carefully the results of the Greek election). In EU fantasyland, people demand that everything go on as usual and that they continue to receive what was "promised" to them by their own self-absorbed and anti-reality politicians.
NOTE: Pretending that the real world doesn't exist is rather infantile—and completely narcissistic.
The second problem is the (supposedly) grown-up narcissists we the people elect to Congress who do the promising, and then refuse to face either external reality (we are going broke and running out of other people’s money to pay for it all) or internal reality (they glory in the power they have over us AND, amazingly, they always profit mightily from it).
Another example of narcissism for fun and profit in the 21st century.
From regulating and taxing the gasoline that goes into your car and the emissions that come out; from state seatbelt laws; all the federal warning labels on cigarettes (the new requirements are absolutely horrifying literally and figuratively 54, all anyone seems to want to do anymore is to micromanage everyone else's behavior.
Local school districts ban dodge ball and tag; ban peanuts from school; Congress mandates what kind of light bulbs to use; what drugs are legal and what drugs are not; whether you can gamble or have church services in your own home.
www.nytimes.com/2001/05/06/us/increasingly-schools-move-to-restrict-dodgeball.html
www.alliancedefensefund.org/Home/ADFContent?cid=5229
The list goes to infinity and beyond.
There is no end to what these postmodern busybodies try to control about your life and your choices. And the farther up the government food chain you go--from the local level to the federal level--the worse it gets.
Ironically, these are the same people who are presumably "pro-choice" and champion "abortion rights" and a Woman's right to choose, arguing that, since it is her body, she gets to kill the fetus if she doesn't want it. But never mind all that when it comes to athletes who want to use performance enhancing drugs. Isn't it their body? So what if I want to "defile" my body by eating pizza with 16 oz sodas for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
Ahhh, they smile happily. You gave up that right when you told us you wanted the government to manage health care. When you shirked your responsibility to take the consequences of your behavior. Now WE have to control that behavior! Of course, we'll do a much better job of it than you would anyway.
Yes, these crusaders for peace and social justice and bans on cigarettes are everywhere, but they are scariest when we ourselves give them the power to make us into children and act out their parental fantasies for our own good.
Take Nanny Pelosi, whose every action is loudly proclaimed" for the children!"—or, so she tells us. Her latest gambit is to “do for childcare what we did for healthcare.”
hotair.com/archives/2011/11/18/pelosi-proclaims-her-goal-to-do-for-childcare-what-we-did-for-healthcare/
Soon, no child care provider will be safe from her intrusive, busybody nanny-statism.
Or, take Barney Frank (please), whose sincere devotion to social justice when he was overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac directly led to the housing crisis.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPSDnGMzIdo
Now, of course, he claims it was all the Republicans’ fault because they didn’t stop him from his madness.
In a rational and yes, a "just" society, these busybodies would be laughed at. In a society that valued self reliance and personal responsibility, they would rightly be considered idiots.