Nine Words That Confirm California's Sharp Left Turn Toward Authoritarianism
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
By now it’s widely known that California is cracking down on plastic — bags and straws — as if they were existential threats. It's virtue signaling gone wild as cities race to outlaw plastic straws because banning plastic bags just wasn't enough. It was at the one of the more recent book burnings, rather, make that plastic straw bannings, that we were told what many of us already know: The "progressive" left in California won't rest until it has established authoritarian control over everyone's lives. The inadvertent announcement was delivered by Santa Barbara City Councilman Jason Dominguez. During the July session in which the City Council voted 6-1 to ban plastic straws and allow plastic stirrers and cutlery to be used only when it is requested by customers, the Democrat said "We have to regulate every aspect of people's lives." His reasoning? "Unfortunately, common sense is just not common." Get the new IBD Politics & Opinion newsletter! Reaction to Dominguez's statement caused him to later say he was sorry for issuing a "string of words in a rhetorical fashion about regulation." The "string," he said, was "not taken as rhetorical and that's my fault so I want to apologize." The statement doesn't need to be apologized for. It needs to be explained. Why would a lawmaker say "We have to regulate every aspect of people's lives" if he didn't really mean to . . . regulate every aspect of people's lives? Dominguez is not a lone tyrant crying in the wilderness of coastal California. This state is filled with politicians who want to regulate, manage, supervise, subjugate, and muzzle the nearly 40 million everyday people of the state. Don't think so? Consider the following evidence: No state restrains commerce with the same degree of enthusiasm that California does. Doing business in California is possible only the right permits, licensing, approvals, and compliance are in hand. Few states tax as punitively as California does. California has the most restrictive gun laws in the country. The free-speech movement began at the University of California in the 1960s, but California lawmakers today want to establish speech codes. The freedom to practice religion is threatened. Some have complained that Fourth Amendment protections are in danger. California's rural residents feel so strongly that they are being tyrannized by left-wing coastal elitists that many want to split off from the rest of the state. Gov. Jerry Brown is an advocate for the "the coercive power of the central state." The animating force behind that advocacy, according to Chapman University professor Joel Kotkin, is a hunger for the state "to gain control over virtually every aspect of planning and development." Sacramento is planning to force a full transition away from fossil fuels. According to the Cato Institute, only one state allows its residents less freedom than California. The Golden State's Heavy Hand As Kotkin has pointed out, "state governments are oppressive, too." "Increasingly, the clearest threat to democracy and minority rights today comes not just from a surfeit of central power concentrated in Washington, D.C., but also from increased centralization of authority within states, and even regional agencies," Kotkin wrote last month in the Los Angeles Daily News. If it seems that California has more in common with Venezuela than it does with Switzerland, ranked by Cato as the world's most-free nation, well, there's good reason for that. As councilman Dominguez's "rhetorical" "string of words" indicates, the once-Golden State is moving fast in the wrong direction. Unchecked by voters, states can become authoritarian, too.
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So is there anything you won't wet your pants over HA?
Plastic straws suck.
wood stir sticks leave a bad taste in coffee, I do recycle plastic stir sticks and coffee cups
Your over riding concern about "leftists" will be overwhelmed by the self-destruction of the Trump presidency.
No regardless of Trump we will continue in the war begun by the left against our Constitutional Republic, liberty, and morality.
no longer will we let you destroy this nation and our liberties
Would that be the nation of liberties and justice for all ?
Let me know where we get there, ok ?
By returning to the Constitution and removing government control over our lives
If we remove all government control over all of our lives what stops America from becoming a Might Makes Right society ?
Unfortunately the more people the more problems leading to more laws and more government to enforce those laws, want a smaller government ? Lessen the population.
PS: The constitution is the base and outline for the government structure and oversight you seem to want to do shrink or away with, what would the need be for a constitution without a government to fulfill its charters ?
In reality, as the population increase I expect the government will as well.
Nonsense that a larger population requires more government
the only necessary functions of government are the protection of persons and property including intellectual property (which includes the military and our borders), a uniform justice system, negotiating treaties and trade agreements, securing the banking and currency systems, a Congress to pass the laws and establish the funding to carry out those responsibilities.
Frederic Bastiat correctly refuted this false accusation in his famous Treatise, The Law in 1850
“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain"
IF that was the only problem solving the government did of course it would be smaller However the amount of people it protects will still dictate the size of the government that provides the protection. The more people to protect the more people it takes to protect them.
In America in my life time that has never been all the American government did and for the rest of my time on earth I doubt it ever is.. The American people decided long ago that is not the only problems facing Americans that they wanted the government to help control and at best solve, I also dont see that stopping in my life time.
I didn't read this in a Treatise, I observed it in my reality.
Sorry to say I have little doubt as the population in America continues to increase so shall the size of the US government.
I don’t don’t that this country will continue to become more and more totalitarian. That’s why I stay as far from civilization as possible
I live within civilization but have always been a self reliant individual working within the system. I found it easier to gain the material things I wanted in my life that way.
What constitutional right(s) are you being denied?
How have we left the US Constitution? You seem to want to turn back the clock to the mid-1800s but you are blissfully unaware of the many disastrous consequences of that action. We'd be a 3rd world country if you got your way.
caution, this video can be hard for some to watch.
Here is an easy way to find the link: