Leftists Love Autocracy

Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, is in a bit of hot water for praising China, shown here.  Many are baffled by why a man from a Western Democracy would admire 'basic dictatorship.'  I am not.  Liberals have a long history of admiring dictatorships.  Cuba is beloved by the left, getting praised for its universal healthcare and education by the likes of Michael Moore and Bernie Sanders.  Sean Penn was a booster for Hugo Chavez.  Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, like Trudeau, praised the one party autocracy of China, noting that they were reasonably enlightened.  Many New Dealers thought very highly of Mussolini's Italy and Stalin's Russia.  Lefties love autocrats.

 

Liberals and Progressives want to use the power of the state to impose their policy preferences on the populace.  Consider: freedom is silence of the law.  If there is no law on a given subject, you are completely free to do whatever appeals to you.  Law is an abridgement of freedom.  In many cases, that is necessary.  However, why aren't we free to plan (or not plan) for retirement without government interference?  Social Security is mandatory.  Why aren't we free to arrange (or not) our health care?  Medicare is a mandatory tax and the Affordable Care Act makes it a crime to lack health insurance.  Why aren't we free to drive with (or without) a seatbelt?  There is a lot of nanny-statism on the left.  Really, we have gotten to limiting the size of soda bottles in some jurisdictions.

 

There was a time before all of these programs and yet we don't read stories about the dead piled in the streets for want of retirement savings or health care.  As Jefferson observed, the tendency is for government to advance and liberty to retreat.  Those in power want more power.  Each new generation of politicians want to exercise a little more power than their predecessors.  As such, they always admire those who already have more power, especially when there is no opposition to prevent such power grabs.  Ah, the joys of dictatorship!

 

Any politician who admires 'basic dictatorship' should be voted out of office as soon as possible.  Any politician who offers praise for any authoritarian government should be immediately rejected by the voters.