Medary.com

In my last post, I let loose a rant about Who We Are. Well, if that's who we are (and yeah, I know that what I wrote is a bit of a stereotype, but aren't all such descriptions, really?) then who are they who are not us.

They're Control Freaks, basically. They aren't all on the Left, either. The right-wing Control Freaks, for the most part, wave a book around and demand that everybody live their lives by their own particular interpretation of what the words in that book means. As such, right wing Control Freaks are usually fairly easy to identify and, if necessary, avoid.

Leftie control freaks are more subtle. (Subtlety is bad here, by the way. Substitute sneaky or disingenuous.) Control freaks on the left want to control your entire life too, but they hide their core desire behind high-minded words and causes--"War on Poverty," "Fight climate change," "universal health care." The list is long and ignominious. But boil it all down, and all Leftist causes reduce do "I know better than you do how you should live your life, and I'm willing to use the force of government to make you behave."

If you have ever said "you need to . . ." then you are a Control Freak, a danger to others, and should be opposed by all people of good will. Nobody likes a busybody. If you have ever said "we need to . . . " then you're showing your inner Control Freak, and need to think long and hard about your deep psychological need to control the actions (and money) of others. If your thoughts tend to run to "I need to do . . ." then you're probably a normal, sane person, who people tend to like, or at least not dislike too intensely.

I'm not sure, but it looks to me that most colleges, but Ivy League schools especially, have remedial classes in How To Be A Control Freak For Fun And Profit. The major national media is almost completely infested with Control Freaks--people who went to Journalism School to "make a difference." The phrase "make a difference" is another code word for "make you behave the way I want you to." It is a marker to indicate that the person using that phrase may be a Control Freak.

Everybody has their Control Freak moments, of course. Truly mature people learn to control themselves first, however, and curb their juvenile impulses to control everybody else. The Founding Fathers were mature and rational people. Our political leadership today--not so much.

Politicians are, by their very nature, Control Freaks. That's why the Constitution was set up the way it was--to throw obstacles in front of the Control Freaks to make it more difficult for Them to control Us. That's why Control Freaks want to ignore the plain words of the Constitution at every turn.

The current group of politicians in Washington are an extreme example of Control Freaks. (Yes, I know, it's tempting to drop the word "Control" when referring to Congress, especially." President Obama is nothing more or less than a particularly extreme example of a Control Freak--and the warning signs were there for all to see during the 2008 campaign.