The change we've been waiting for

It couldn't possibly just be that progressives are wrong. About anything, no less.

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It couldn't even possibly be the obvious - that Americans cannot be forced to trust (the most serious contradiction in terms humanity's history has to offer) a government that has so thoroughly earned its mistrust - because that would mean that progressives are wrong about something.

And that's just too extreme for any progressive to swallow. Ever. And always will be.

As long as they're right about everything. And can explain everything else as everyone being too stupid to know their wisdom.

It may be that this is what Montequieu and Madison and Acton and Mill and Twain warned us about. Or perhaps progressives can explain to us how they are right and everyone else is wrong about even that.

It's not just the snottiness. The straight-faced slander of racist or crazy for those who disagree with the health bill. The arrogance behind the progressive response to the distrust of the health bill and those who passed it.

It's the backwards logic behind the whole premise.

You have the right to health care. So if you don't exercise that right, we'll fine you. And we'll imprison you, if you still further do not exercise that right.

How would that work with speech?

If you do not criticize your government for passing legislation with such backwards logic - you have a right that you will be imprisoned for if you do not exercise it - would you be imprisoned for criticizing the legislation - which would express your hostility to the enlightened wisdom behind such a walking contradition?

Or would you be imprisoned for not criticizing it - since this would be more consistent with the logic that rights are something to be enforced against citizens by a governing authority?

How would that work for religion?

If you choose to exercise your right of freedom of religion by not practicing it or by not attending a church, regularly, shouldn't we pass laws that enforce that you exercise that right if it is to truly be a right, by the logic of this health care law?

How about for the press?

If you choose to start a newspaper but all it ever has to say is just how terrific the world is, and, in particular, how hunky dory government is, would that make you a progressive or would that get you a sentence?

How about freedom of assembly?

If you choose not to protest your government, shouldn't the government be able to imprison or fine you for failing to exercise a right that the Founders risked their lives for you to have? You ungrateful slob.

I was under the impression that being liberal was conceived as the suspicion of all this horseshit. Especially the most pernicious horseshit of all these days.

That government knows best.

Especially when it's run by people like me. And not like those other losers who always fuck things up. And willfully resist my infallible judgment.

That's the narrative, at least. A narrative, because nothing could ever just be right or wrong.

Because if it was, people would be capable of being right or wrong, in their judgment.

And if progressives are people, that might imply that they could be wrong. About any one of their positions. Including their holiest of holy grails.

And no self-respecting progressive could stand for that.

Because that gets back to that impossible notion that progressives could be wrong.

Which would mean that they are the obstacle to progress they've been seeking to remove. Perhaps they really are the change they've been waiting for.

Now the rest of us are just waiting for them to change. For once.

Maybe starting with something a little less condescending this time around.