The Soundtrack of Progressive Destruction

"2013 has been a banner year for damning self-portraits of American progressivism," writes Daren Jonescu in an American Thinker piece so delicious that it's impossible to stop quoting.

"If you like your plan, you can keep it." This is a perfect iteration of the basic lie that has fueled modernity's "progress" down the drain of history -- or History, as progressive thinkers would have it. [snip]

You have heard this lie, and witnessed the tyrannical dialectic it sets in motion, your whole life, as have your parents and grandparents. Variations on this theme have become the soundtrack of late modernity's decline. The theme remains the same; only the melodic details are changed to suit the collectivist totalitarian agenda item of the moment.

"If you like your current healthcare arrangements, you can keep them" -- except that our intention is to delegitimize, denigrate, and finally outlaw all private healthcare arrangements.

"If you like your 'negative rights,' you can keep them" -- except that the new positive rights we are gradually introducing into the political lexicon will necessarily override your life, liberty, and property, not to mention trumping all the secondary rights derived from those initial three, such as speech, association, and religion.