Progressives are totalitarians manqué. This has always been the case, but it is now quite obvious. When a business firm is bailed out by the government, the government acquires control over the firm. Governmental officials can then dictate how the business is run. In the case of automobile companies, these officials can dictate which motor vehicles are produced. When government funds health care, it decides which forms of care are available. Governmental officials can then dictate that certain procedures not be performed or that certain technologies not be used for certain ailments. When government limits emissions, as in the cap-and-trade program, it decides which products may be produced, how individuals run their households, and so on. As governmental control increases, individual liberty decreases. It's a zero-sum game.
Nothing that I am saying here is original. Many people have warned for a very long time about the loss of liberty entailed by increasing governmental intervention in our lives. What I'm saying is that this is built into progressivism. The progressive has a vision of how the world ought to be, and wants to acquire the power that will allow him or her to realize that vision. The progressive mind is an engineering mind. It is hubristic, optimistic, and impatient. Nothing is immune to tinkering: not the economy, not education, not the natural environment, not law, not medicine, not even the family. It's no accident that eugenics was a progressive cause. When progressives look at human beings, they see ignorance, stupidity, viciousness, and ugliness. These things can be changed! That it takes manipulation, coercion, or even force to change them is irrelevant. The end justifies the means.
I hope that Americans grasp what is happening and stop the social engineers in their tracks in 2010. If they don't, they will deserve to have their liberty destroyed.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 