By the time most of you read this, a new post should be up at Homeland Stupidity. I’ll link to it when I can get to a computer after it’s up.

Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos fame has declared that he’s a ‘libertarian democrat’. A meaningless assertion (although a libertarian-leaning democrat can exist, and I know several). Kos uses the right words, but twists them completely out of shape to the point where they mean about as much as my assertion that I’m white (see picture on left). “Greater Freedom Through Increased Legislation” is his rallying cry. Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense on the face of it, and makes even less after you get past the surface.

Now the AMA is playing the same game. Insisting that ‘personal responsibility should be required’. Now, I’ve been using those two words since I was about 17. So roughly 300 times longer than the AMA, who seem to have first invoked it about a week ago, after decades of pushing legislation through ‘for the public’s own good’. And in all my reading and discussion of such an idea, I never realized that you could legislate and force personal responsibility. That would be like saying my dog has personal responsibility because she doesn’t pee inside, tear stuff up, and stays off the couch. Obedience is a bit more like it.

It’s a game these guys have been playing since FDR redefined ‘freedom’ as ‘comfort’ in common parlance. It’s a game played by the douchebags at People for the American Way, the entire Democratic Party, and, well, virtually everyone in the business of expanding the role of the state and minimizing the role of the individual in day to day life. They use the words our forefathers bled and died for. They phrase things to make it sound as if they aren’t building a cage (albeit an initially comfortable one) around us. And the sad thing is, all too many of us buy it as 70 years ago our grandparents did with FDR’s socialism, hook line and sinker.

It reminds me of a great Blues Traveler song: The Hook(click for music video). It was about the 500th time I heard the song that I actually listened to what he was saying. First, I laughed my head off at their wit. And then I laughed at my stupidity for singing along without realizing what I was singing. And all these years later I nod my head in understanding at what’s happening to us:

It doesn’t matter what I say
So long as I sing with inflection
That makes you feel I’ll convey
Some inner truth or vast reflection
But I’ve said nothing so far
And I can keep it up for as long as it takes
And it don’t matter who you are
If I’m doing my job
then it’s your resolve that breaks

Because
the hook brings you back
I ain’t tellin’ you no
lie
The hook brings you back
On that you can rely

There is something amiss
I am being insincere
In fact I don’t mean any of this
Still my confession
draws you near
To confuse the issue I refer
To familiar heroes from long ago…

Sometimes it’s scary that songs can be so on-point when they were never meant to be.