If a Republican president . . .- lashed out at television news networks, radio hosts and others for their coverage of and opinions about him
- questioned the legitimacy of the information on the Internet and the utility of the devices that provide it
- had his agencies seek to reclassify Internet Service Providers for the purposes of greater regulation and control
- and THEN nominated a friend and fellow law professor to the Supreme Court who said that the exercise of free speech is dependent on how the government calculates the social costs of that speech (!)
Would there not be ponderous statements from Senators about "deeply disturbing" revelations about the nominee that raise concerns about her qualification to serve on the court, and the president's overall intentions given a series of unseemly statements from the bully pulpit against political dissent?
(Let's leave aside for a moment the even larger context of the president's youthful associations with all sorts of "revolutionary" Marxist thinkers, his government taking more and more control of automakers, banks, insurance companies, etc., and his apparent disinterest in the tyranny of and crushing of political dissent by statists such as Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Castros, etc. Ex-communist James Burnham's maxim that for so-called liberals "there are no enemies on the left" seems more apropos than ever.)
Hypocrisy in politics is nothing new, nor is it restricted to the Democratic Party. However, when the people with "good intentions" are running the show apparently, tyranny, even in creeping soft forms is deemed impossible. Right up until, as the French Revolution showed, they're not running the show anymore, and their heads are in the guillotines.
But, civility and courtliness will prevail, because after all, they're all friends and colleagues in Washington.
So, Elena Kagan will be confirmed, and the creep of soft tyranny will continue.
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