Sometimes you run across a piece of opinionizing so cluelessly arrogant it takes your breath away. Here’s one sent to me by Jim Bovard:
Michael Tomasky challenges us to name a single freedom we’ve lost to the Obama administration.
Oh, except any freedoms that mostly only affect people of Arab descent. Because you see, Tomasky is snootily certain none of us actually care about them. (And he’s blissfully unaware that what can be done to the least popular today can be done to others tomorrow. As in “When they came for the [fill in the blank] …”) So before issuing his challenge he automatically excludes little things like … oh, the NDAA, the continuing horrors of Gitmo, military tribunals. No, none of those count in Tomasky’s eyes because they happen mostly to brown people and/or Muslims. Otherwise? Obama’s been a saint!
So, here’s your challenge, you pathetic “Freedom Fetishists.” Name one, just one freedom the U.S. has lost in the last three + years thanks to the Obama administration.
Hit the comment section … 1 … 2 … 3 …. go!
ADDED: Oh yeah, and if you have a Twitter account, how about carrying the challenge over there, too? Hashtag #FreedomFetish.
The freedom to choose whether to carry health insurance or not, the freedom to only offer health insurance consistent with your religious beliefs, the freedom to form groups to petition for the redress of grievances without being minutely questioned by the IRS… just for starters.
Freedom to bank offshore. FATCA. Banks in other countries kicking Americans out because Big Uncle says no matter where they are in the world they have to report to our gov.
The freedom to obtain for oneself effective medical treatment for one’s illnesses that the government has chosen not to pay for. Or the freedom to not personally pay for the deliberate and intentional slaughter of innocent children.
(Sorry, folks…while I acknowledge that the Republicans are not our friends in the freedom war, the Democrats most definitely are our enemies. The odds are rather strongly against any of us ever actually getting rounded up into camps or deported to gitmo…but if Obama is re-elected this fall, it is absolutely certain that in 2014 my wife will have to choose between going on birth control pills, leaving her medical condition untreated, or going to prison.)
Freedom to receive due process before detention.
Good (bad) ones. How about freedom to avoid being assassinated by the U.S. government?
… But I suppose Tomasky would consider that to be one of those things we can’t worry about because it applies only to Muslims. For now.
The attempt to install enough “fear” in me to comply with these examples:
Freedom to “legally” own livestock unencumbered by .gov
Freedom to have Beehives on my property without the threat of destruction unless inspected.
Freedom to sleep at night without wondering if the S.W.A.T. from Sallie Mae (Student Loan Program) are gonna’ come knocking.
Freedom to protest within (insert X amount of feet) of some politician who may or may not be protected by the Secret Service.
Right to a Trial – Death by Drone comes to mind.
Thankfully my fear meter is broken. I’m at about disgust level now.
The failure to undo the crimes against freedom committed by his predecessors.
The Obama-bots like to try to deflect a lot of these criticisms with the cry “Boosh done it first!”. In many cases that is true; but how is that any excuse for Obama to keep doing crappy things Bush did? After all, Obama was supposed to be the “cure” for Bush.
“No worse than Bush” strikes me as a pretty pitiful standard to measure by.
freedom from surveillance, freedom of travel, repeated attempts to destroy the second amendment, each and every time there is a loss of just a little bit more freedom, freedom to vote as you will, (obama “justice dept” non prosecution of voter intimidation) , theft of tax money for solyndra and other such “businesses”, the use of executive orders to “legislate”, the use of unconstitutional “czars” claiming the power to go to war unilaterally. to kill, destruction of the economy and currency.
the dept of agriculture has imposed a huge loss of freedom on individual farmers through regulation and costly and burdensome mandates.
A little OT, so forgive me, but this article has to be a plant!!! Perhaps the author wanted to keep his good name as a card carrying totalitarian apologist while doing Obama a bad turn? Tomasky is either a clever Freedomista or is on a personal vendetta against the present administration. It would seem he’s cleverly reminding us of exactly what kind of man Barry and his minions are.
We’ve lost the freedom to speak freely about the government without looking around first to see who’s listening.
The federal tax on cheap cigars rose something like 500%. I am still in mourning.
Well lets see…since he got elected we have mandatory health insurance, if I want to visit home I have to pick between getting naked pictures of myself taken and stored in a government hard drive or having some mouth breather that couldn’t pass the ASVAB credit card swipe my buttcrack, gas has gone up rather than going down like everyone said it magically would after bush left, the economy is worse, the FDA has stuck it’s nose into all sorts of things that it used to not have any say over such as workout supplements and tobacco. Stuff that used to have to go through congress are now just put into ink by random uber-lefties that Obama has made up cabinet jobs for. I could go on…
And speaking of Tobacco…can’t have clove cigarettes anymore. I’m still mad about this. I realize how terrible they are and if it saves just one angsty kid from making my mistake and ending up with a scratchy voice and a girlfreind that listens to Siouxie and the Banshees…I guess I can live with it.
SO thank you FDA for ruining slightly depressing Absinthe night for adults. It’s now completely depressing.
Well obviously the freedoms everyone mentioned here are not rights.
Everyone knows rights are only granted by government, this freedom stuff, what’s that got to do with rights?
Ya know rights are very specific and only a narrow range of things fit in the category called rights, unless the government decides otherwise.
The definition of a right changes all the time depending on what the government decides.
This is what it means to be ruled.
How can we be ruled if everyone gets to decide which freedoms are rights?
I mean, come on, the government owns Everything, as the true owner they get to decide for us all. That’s why we call the president, the great decider.
And how can the great decider be a great decider if he can’t watch our every move, know everything about us and take all our stuff or even snuff us out?
/sarc OFF.
I doubt Michael Tomasky is being a “plant” I’ve encountered many People with this very opinion on numerous boards for quite some time,… and they are very serious.
Because The Fed enables the goberment to fund and federalize local police forces, encouraged and enabled by this admin, little girls across the nation have lost the right to operate a lemon-aide stand on their parents property.
The police forces would not be able to crack down on little girls like this if it weren’t for the enabling actions of this admin in conjunction with The Fed. … Or so it seems.
Sorry for such a generic response, but we’ve lost the freedom to make decisions for ourselves. Whatever decisions we do make undoubtedly breaks 4 or 5 laws (which we have no idea even exist.)
But I did get a chuckle out of this part of the article: “If people don’t want such laws, they need to elect different representatives. It’s that simple.” I wonder what would happen if there was a years ban on making new laws (for anything)…..
The Nuremberg Laws were laws, made within our political processes, according to the rules and norms of same. The President isn’t the king. He didn’t decree these laws. Congress negotiated them and passed them. If people don’t want such laws, they need to elect Congresspeople that won’t make them. This, incidentally, is the answer to an oft-bruited rhetorical question, “What’s to prevent the government from making a law requiring that everyone eat broccoli?” One answer is: nothing, at least in theory. If a future Congress wants to make such a law, it can do so and see what happens in the courts. Which means that the real answer is—politics. If you don’t want a law mandating the eating of broccoli, work to elect people to Congress who won’t pass such laws. The folks on the pro-broccoli side will work to do the opposite, and the side that does a better job will win. That’s the democratic process. Majority rule. “Freedom” has nothing to do with it.
“If people don’t want such laws, they need to elect Congresspeople that won’t make them. This, incidentally, is the answer to an oft-bruited rhetorical question, “What’s to prevent the government from making a law requiring that everyone eat broccoli?” One answer is: nothing, at least in theory. If a future Congress wants to make such a law, it can do so and see what happens in the courts. Which means that the real answer is—politics.”
Wrong, -S. The real answer is–don’t eat broccoli.
A congressperson (and Presidents!) will tell you anything to get elected, so it does no good to elect the person who says he won’t pass The Broccoli Law; when he gets in office, he does pass The Broccoli Law, and we are (theoretically) left having to eat broccoli. And stuck with that congressperson in office forever.
“That’s the democratic process. Majority rule. “Freedom” has nothing to do with it.”
Or rather, the democratic process, i.e. majority rule, has nothing to do with Freedom. It has everything to do with elitism and control.
In general, “inalienable rights” are there to protect the minority. Majority rule doesn’t mean every one can be made to eat brocolli. when the ‘majority’ decides something they must do so in the context of fundamental human rights. I might also point out that law by executive fiat is not ‘majority rule’, but it is why bureaucrats so love their positions of power.
The right to be left alone.
“The President isn’t the king. He didn’t decree these laws. Congress negotiated them and passed them.”
I wasn’t aware that Executive Orders were negotiated, debated, and passed by congress? Did congress pass the one about sealing BO’s personal records back when he first took office? Because I’d love to see the transcript of that debate, just to see what the h*** they were thinking.
The freedom to smoke clove or other flavored cigarettes. Oh and there is the issue of the 2012 Defense Appropriations Act allowing for US citizens to be detained indefinitely w/out charges…
majority rule…..yeah….about that:
So if 51 out of 100 people want you to be executed that’s OK, right?
Its democratic……..
Apparently I was less than clear in my earlier post.
Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_laws
Then note that the substitution of these two and just a few other words in Tomasky’s screed produces what I submitted.
Then spend a day touring Auschwitz, coating your shoes with the ground-up bone fragments of the targets of these laws.
Once one has confronted industrialized murder, all of it perfectly legal, passed by Majority Rule, and therefore, according to the Tomasky’s of this world, legitimate, then one can realize the futility of debating with people who are ignorant of the most basic facts of democide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide
And I was less than clear, as well. I did a drive by.
The ‘process’ doesn’t work. ‘working to elect people to Congress who won’t pass such laws’ doesn’t work. Time after time, decent people are sent to the legislature to effect change for the better. Time after time, you learn that they are doing something entirely different after they have been there a while.
The constitution doesn’t work.
Either it was constructed to create the situation we have now, or it has failed to prevent it.
Either way it has failed.
Any prosperity it ‘created’ (a debatable point), worked against the relentless vigilance needed to keep the government it spawned in check.
Lord Acton was right. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Hiring people to take care of you doesn’t work.
I haven’t lost a single freedom, ever, unless I gave it up willingly. Yes, I may have to watch out while exercising that freedom for a gummint goon who wants to kidnap me and put me in a cage, but the cost of liberty has always been the willingness and ability to defend that liberty, with extreme prejudice. Try to kidnap my kids, goons. You. Will. Die.
The freedom to take joy in being and American…
-S wrote, “The President isn’t the king. He didn’t decree these laws. Congress negotiated them and passed them.”
It seems like you’re not at all familiar with how administrative rules become laws. Not a bit of input from el presidente, the congress or any other legislative body.
For example, I read a news story about a farmer in Michigan who is losing his right to raise whatever breed of pigs he wants, soon to be so for all farmers there. The change was brought about by an administrative regulation made up by the DNR. Who elects the DNR?
clark — -S was satirically quoting the idiot I linked to in the post.
re. UnReconstructed – hit the nail on the head. The simple freedom of just being left alone! In simplicity we all want to be just flat left alone.
a web search of the florida “Mosely Flag (1845)” will show this to be a popular thought. . . . however “controversial”.
Ah, thanks, Claire.
That’s it, no more comments from me right after I work out in the garden. … The dirt kicked my butt today,… however; I think I won, today anyway.
LOL, you after gardening must be like me before morning tea. I think I’m making sense, but …
Anyhow, beat that dirt until it yields all the goodies you want from it!
Due process! The indefiniate detention portion of the NDAA. You can be detained indefinately without charges or access to a lawyer.
I find it hard to believe that no one has mentioned the loss of pretty wood on new Gibson guitars.
How about the freedom to not have my great grandchildren saddled with paying for our social security, medicare, ObamaCare, and shiny new weapons?
My as yet unborn grandchildren are already saddled with debt……under the Obama administration, the amount of debt has ballooned up so far that two generations will not be able to pay it even if we were to start paying it down NOW.
Which we won’t do…we will just keep kicking the can down the road as far as we can.
Just saw Paul Hsieh’s answer to the question.