The hard left: Ultimate Authoritarian

There’s a thread at DailyKos where a liberal (who will soon be a libertarian) is defending the right to keep and bear arms, and doing a pretty damn good job of it, I’d like to say.  Of course, he’s taking quite the pounding in the comments section because god forbid that people have firearms, but quite happily there are also a lot of liberals that are affirming an individual right to keep and bear arms.  If they could just get their party to run a guy like Bill Richardson…but I digress.

As I was wading through the hip-deep muck that is the comments on DailyKos, I noticed one comment in particular which perfectly exemplified the left-wing authoritarian mindset that we so often see.

The day blogs, or womens’ right to vote, or the right to peaceful assembly find a way to start killing thousands of people each year then I’ll start asking whether we need to further define how a person utilizes that right (albeit without denying it wholly).

Translated – “We respect your rights up to the point where the exercise of liberty becomes a little too messy and makes us squeamish, then we restrict the hell out of them”.

Liberty for its own sake is sort of a lost concept for a lot of these people, isn’t it?  Can you imagine if a Republican said “we respect your right to free speech, unless that free speech is about something we don’t like”?  The left would probably blow a gasket.  But when they say that it’s okay to restrict liberties in the name of safety, everyone on their side sagely nods their had as if some great wisdom has just been passed (note – that is a broad generalization, I know not all self-identifying liberals are authoritarian pricks) and they all go merrily on their way.

H/T Unclesaurus Rex

8 Comments

  1. Yes. Because the modern Republican party doesn’t have an authoritarian bent at all. No sir. None. Not a trace.

    [/sarcasm]

  2. I never said they didn’t. I just find it amusing that the people who are ostensibly all about civil liberties only like those civil liberties until they become inconvenient.

  3. I’m wondering if the dKos animals have ever looked at, say, the history of early 20th-Century Russia, and wondered about that “free-speech” angle you to which you were referring.

    Would they stick their collective heads (the only kind they have) in the sand and orchestrate some sort of mental sophistry in an attempt at deflecting what can ONLY be interpreted as free speech and assembly inciting a riot, to cause a full-scale civil war?

    I’m assuming so, since it’s the only thing that liberals show any talent for, whitewashed lies.

    Killing people isn’t something that anyone should rejoice in, but damnit, sometimes it must be done, and for reasons that SHOULD be obvious to anyone with more than just a few functioning synapses.

    That is all.

  4. i am forced to tolerate filth, decadence and blatant lies in the media under the guise of free speech, where are the “reasonable restrictions” there?

  5. I just find it amusing that the people who are ostensibly all about civil liberties only like those civil liberties until they become inconvenient.

    Politics of convenience. Nothing particularly liberal or conservative about that.

  6. Hence why I don’t really believe that there is much of a functional difference between most republicans and most democrats these days.

  7. Athoritarianism comes in all colors. While gun-rights tends to be a republican issue, there are gun grabbing republicans (Hopefully McCain isn’t one of them, but I wouldn’t put money on it…)

    And The Dems are generally known for their love of the 1st amendment, I didn’t see many republicans working to censor Rush Limbaugh, or make people pay for a blogging licence…

    Still there are the ACLU types that seem to count to ten 1, 3, 4, 5 , 6, 7, 8 ,9, 10…

  8. Liberals: “We’re all for our rights, just not yours.”

    Seriously, between the gun-control, “fairness doctrine,” “hate speech” laws, and other such bull, I find it laughable that they can even claim the mantra of protecting personal liberty. Conservatives do more in that area (and I mean real Conservatives, not Republicans or Neo-conservatives) than they ever do…

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