By Kurt Schlichter
Who the hell is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to presume that
he has a say in what I or any other American chooses to drink? Of
course, the answer for any self-respecting citizen is that he has no
such say, and the proper response to him and his legion of petty fascist
fan boys is the suggestion that they pucker up – and I will politely
decline to identify what they should kiss.
It’s a sad commentary that the once boisterous, independent,
take-no-guff New Yorker of the past has been replaced by a gutless,
cowardly supplicant eager to obey the commands of whatever pint—sized
potentate occupies Gracie Mansion. Back in the day, a real New Yorker
would look that tiny troll in the mayor’s office in his beady little
eyes and laugh, “Hey Mikey, I got your Big Gulp right here.”
These bossy snobs are getting out of hand, and it’s time to push back
– hard. Besides being the American thing to do, resistance to this
creeping liberal totalitarianism is a huge opportunity for
conservatives.
Obedience to arbitrary authority is counter to everything that
America stands for. We didn’t reluctantly cede a tiny bit of our
personal sovereignty to the government so a bunch of know-it-all twerps
could tell us what to eat, what to smoke, what to do and how to live.
We did it to allow them the ability to keep order, which they have
manifestly failed to do, and to perform a few basic governmental
functions, which they have likewise failed to do.
So, a government that has failed to adequately perform the few
discrete tasks which it should be performing now wishes to do a bunch of
other things which it has no business doing in the first place, and
which it will inevitably do badly and thereby cause even more problems
than existed in the first place.
It’s time to say “No,” and our rejection of this obnoxious
governmental overreach has the potential to create a new coalition that
could up-end the status quo.
Real conservatives detest the idea of a government so big and
intrusive that it feels free to interfere with such basic liberties as
choosing what to eat. And they also hate the idea of a government so
big and intrusive that it feels that it is within its rights to, say,
blow up American citizens within the United States because it, well,
thinks blowing them up is a good idea.
It’s all part of the same unearned hubris. The notion that some
government functionary can tell you what you can drink or not drink
based on his notion of what’s good for society is not so far from the
notion that he can decide who lives or who dies based on his notion of
what’s good for society.
Sadly, the enablers of these uppity functionaries aren’t just the
usual liberal nanny-staters. You have putative Republicans conceding
that “Well, I guess sugar is really bad…”, as if it matters whether high
fructose corn syrup is the devil’s brew or an elixir from the Fountain
of Youth. They should never reach the question of whether sugar is
good, bad or indifferent; the mere posing of the question is
antithetical to everything a real conservative believes. It’s none of
their damn business.
Moreover, the appalling argument that “Well, we all have to pay for
obesity” itself accepts the flawed premise that “we all” have any
business paying for anyone’s health care. I’ve researched the
Constitution pretty thoroughly and have been unable to find anything
about me shelling out my dough to subsidize some couch-dwelling
slacker’s doctor visits.
Maybe the enumerated power to do so is dwelling behind some penumbra or
emanation, but it seems like making that argument accepts the idea that
government ought to be in the health care business in the first place.
And if the fact that the Constitution says nothing about doing so isn’t
enough to show why it shouldn’t be, the idea that because the government
does so gives it the right to micromanage our lives is itself ample
reason to reject that hateful notion.
The specter of pseudo-cons like Senators John McCain and Lindsay
Graham fussing about Senator Rand Paul making a stink about the fact
that the President’s progressive Mini-Me
Eric Holder refused to give a straight answer about whether The One
could ice folks in the U.S.A. on a whim demonstrates the problem. Too
many sort of-cons sort of like the idea of unlimited governmental power.
And you know who else besides real conservatives has some real
questions about governmental overreach? Well, a lot of them are folks
we conservatives have been simply unable to reach. In fact, we hardly
even tried, mostly because we are just as suspicious of them as they are
of us.
There is a whole group of potential allies out there – the
Millennials who grew up familiar with technology but chafing at their
helicopter parents and the politically correct hypocrisy of the
education establishment. Many of them think of themselves as “liberal,”
but they have little use for bums who want to lay about sponging off
producers. Their liberalism is more about affectation and cultural
posturing than about political positions – they reject the idea of the
anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-sex conservative boogeyman they’ve been
taught in the media, not conservatism itself.
These young folks have bought into the notion that conservatives are
somehow obsessed with other people’s sex lives, which is false –
conservatives are obsessed with their own sex lives, as the CPAC meat
market demonstrates. But the wacky notion that some conservative is
going to climb in their bedroom window to interrupt their trysting by
making them pray has convinced this huge demographic to support an
ideology that leaves them burdened with student debt and living in their
parents’ homes – and thus unlikely to ever have sex to begin with.
The key to defeating this residual cultural affinity is twofold.
First, conservatives need to avoid feeding old stereotypes with
boneheaded maneuvers like making idiotic pronouncements about rape and
writing jerktastic articles about how being a gay conservative is the
result of a Marxist conspiracy. Remember, these young people grew up
being taught to be tolerant. They’ll be tolerant of anyone – including
hardcore Christians – who are themselves tolerant. We don’t have to
accept anything we consider immoral – we just have to not be jerks about
it.
Second, conservatives need to emphasize the pro-freedom agenda that
both demographics share. Millenials have no desire to be dictated to
about their snack options or hellfired by some drone either. Nor do
they want to get arrested for jailbreaking their iPhone or sued for a
$100,000 for downloading the latest terrible Mumford & Sons song.
And for the few who have found jobs in the Obama economy, the tax bite
on their pay stubs is just as unwelcome.
Call it the Coalition of the Unwilling to Be Bossed Around.
A pro-liberty coalition is a huge threat to the progressive project,
as it steals from the progressive base while building on the
conservative one. But we need to understand that we may be called on to
give in order to get. The young demographic has huge doubts about the
drug war and is largely pro-gay rights and gay marriage. Of course,
they need to accept the fact that they don’t get to be little dictators
either – the Boy Scouts get to choose their membership and doctors who
understand the Hippocratic oath as excluding killing their unborn
patients get to exercise their conscience.
We need to understand that the freedom sometimes means people make
choices we don’t like and, where appropriate, compromise. I’m certainly
ready to accept a few stoners bogarting doobs and some gay dudes
exchanging vows if it means a smaller government so constrained and
neutered that it wouldn’t dare try to tell me how to live out my faith
or how many bullets I can keep in my M4, much less how many ounces of
Mountain Dew I can pour into my Styrofoam cup.
It’s time to put aside a few policy disagreements to build a new
alliance of citizens who believe that government has gotten too big for
its britches and needs to be reined in. We may not agree on all the
specifics, but we can build a majority of Americans who can stand
together for liberty and, as one, offer the proper response to these tin
pot dictators of liberalism: “Bite me.”
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