Never have the cannons of government turned with such determination and force against the American people.  The theme of liberal government is its pursuit of legitimacy through power -- there is only futility in believing otherwise.  If you disagree with the curent administration, you are the enemy.  It is a message delivered to the nation with shot.  We are witness to the force of dishonesty when spoken with enough audacity and counterfeit outrage that reason must limp from the encounter.  Progressive interests in America are now seeking to exploit any rhetorical or imagined social differences in our culture in order to create a general perception of systemic injustices from which to establish the political conditions necessary for their success.

Due to the interference of progressive design upon America’s first principles -- her fundamental commitment to the protection of her citizens and their rights, to equality, liberty, and self-determination -- liberalism has changed into a politicized authoritarian ideology.  It has become, in effect, a strategy of power.  Its scripture now demands a twofold sacrifice of intellectual honesty to ideological commitment and of individual conscience to a political shame culture -- and so zealously have its votaries defended intellectual oppression and the misinformation that proceeds from propaganda, that it is now necessary to secure freedom from the liberal.

Freedom is a principle to be defended, not an issue to be argued.  Unfinished minds, however, have been taught that freedom is an arbitrary privilege of class, wealth, and property -- and therefore valid as an issue of social justice.  But nowhere in a just society can the equality of all persons be considered apart from the freedom enjoyed by each person.  We cannot err as a nation if we assert that the principles of equality and freedom are the foundation of individual rights.  To speak against the assertion is to favor a special definition of justice found only in the handbooks of tyranny.  If we are made to believe that justice is the rule of the stronger party, then we have forfeited a first principle of democratic society to the new liberal order.  If we cannot live as we like under equal protection, free of the prejudices of ideology, free of unwarranted State interference, free to pursue our personal interests under law without harming the rights of others or without being harmed by others, then there is no such virtue as justice.

Why do progressives feel they must strike down these principles in order to establish a better form of government?  Any barrier to freedom inhibits the good that an individual might achieve in his own choice, in his own study, or in his relationship with society.  When leftists encourage hatred or intolerance towards others or distort the truth through their propaganda, when they stifle dissent and reward conformity of thought with the spirit of inclusion, they impair not only the maturity and character of the person, but they are also making a perverse form of social equality by denying whole populations the freedom to enjoy their right to know, their right to express, and their right to self-determination.  If one wishes to believe what others have told him to believe, then he is not a free individual.  This is the basis of new age political correctness.  Those who desire political identity and stature within a closed society more than they would the spirit and courage of intellectual honesty have already forfeited their intelligence to the new liberal order.

Freedom under law is an idea implicit in America’s founding documents -- that the people, in regard to their lives and their just pursuits, shall be free of the arbitrary or coercive powers of government.  This is more than a reasonable contract between society and State.  It is rather a fundamental principle of justice correlative to that of equality under law.  In order to ensure these mutually reliant principles, the Constitution of the United States and Bill of Rights include precise language prohibiting the federal government from undue interference in the speech, the privacy, or the activity of persons and associations.  But a long succession of attempts on the Constitution has shown that the progressive character -- adolescent, aggressive, ideologically driven, and intolerant of opposition -- is dissatisfied with a charter that tells the government what it cannot do.  And this unfortunate disinclination to accept any constraint on the authority of the federal government we may define as "the liberal problem" in America.

In only one political season, and in our enthusiasm to participate in a historic election, America forgot herself and her fundamental moral purpose.  Had we observed the red marks of one unprepared to assume to duties, the trust, or the character of the presidency, there never would have been an Obama administration.  That the American people could have been persuaded to elect an ideologue so opposed to the Constitution of the United States, so willing to operate beyond its provisions, and so capable of lying to the people in order to secure his office proves a fault in the man.  That we could have re-elected him, however, proves a fault in ourselves.  The vote-farming tactics developed and employed by the liberal establishment since the '08 election have created vulnerable and reliant constituencies, fearful of upsetting the distinction between entitlement and servitude; and one can already sense a strenuous reluctance among these targeted populations to change their new relationship with the State.

Barack Obama has largely succeeded in the small affairs of politics, but his ideology could not assist him in preserving the nation’s economic and security interests; and in these greater matters, he has failed.  Our choices define our humanity; but Obama has failed to prove that the choices available to us by the good intentions of government providers are the only good choices.  All his promises meet in the socialist economic disillusionment of the European states -- that a world of government assistance and entitlement programs, of high taxation, and forcible wealth distribution represents a world without choices.

The people cannot express their will through a government that seeks to impose its will upon them.  As President Obama withdraws American influence from the world, he extends a malicious imperial doctrine into the domestic private sector.  In exercising its vast regulatory powers, his administration has discovered the means by which it may exceed its lawful commission given by the people as expressed in their written Constitution.  Therefore, against the willful disregard of fundamental law by a few in the power of office, the people must hold dearly their own legitimate right and obligation to correct their government.  As the Oracle of History counsels us, government is the least effective instrument of progress yet devised by intelligence, but it has often proven the most effective engine of control of the many by a few -- and control, in the progressive's dictionary, is the universal definition of progress.

Anyone wishing to agree or disagree with the author, to discuss, suggest or censure, may contact him at his email address: phahl@icloud.com.