Brown vs. Coakley = Liberty vs. Tyranny

A video gone viral states in clear, unmistakable language what Tuesday’s U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts is all about: “Today our liberty is threatened by another tyrannical government.”

The run-up to the 2008 presidential election and the first year of Barack Obama’s administration represent a virtual case study in how authoritarian rule begins to take root. History surely will recite a lengthy litany of freedom-restricting and/or government power-enhancing laws, regulations, actions, and statements that have come from Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and their swelling ranks of apparatchiks since they assumed one-party control of the U.S. government and Congress early last year. But the Bay State’s beleaguered electorate need only focus on three dangerous developments since 2010 began to understand the overarching importance of their choice on Tuesday.

The first definition of “tyranny” at Dictionary.com tells us that it is the “arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority.” All three items that follow, and so much else that has occurred in the past year, fit that primary definition to a T.

First, there’s the president’s proposed bank tax — er, “financial responsibility fee.”

This sentence in the White House’s related “fact sheet” gives away their game (bold is mine):

It is our responsibility to ensure that the taxpayer dollars that supported these actions are reimbursed by the financial sector so that the deficit is not increased.

Note that the statement does not attempt to identify the specific people or entities in the financial sector who are supposedly responsible for the Troubled Asset Relief Program’s shortfall. No, no, no. That would be hard work; and besides, they wouldn’t like the answers. Instead, Barack Obama considers the resources of an entire industry fair game for plunder and is playing the so-called responsibility card to whip up ordinary citizens’ emotions against it. This is how tyrants think and act.

And yes, I said “plunder.” The Wall Street Journal described the nature of that plunder perfectly in an editorial last week as it observed that government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are exempt from the tax — even though Fan and Fred spent 15 years misrepresenting the quality of what ultimately amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars in subprime and worse mortgages they foisted on the capital markets (italics is theirs):

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac … surely did more than any other company to cause the housing boom and bust. The key to understanding their free tax pass is that on Christmas Eve Treasury lifted the $400 billion cap on their potential taxpayer losses expressly so they can rewrite more underwater mortgages at a loss.

In other words, the White House wants to tax more capital away from profit-making banks to offset the intentional losses that the politicians have ordered up at Fan and Fred.

That’s plunder — a brazen attempt at government-sponsored looting of the private sector on behalf of bankrupt government-sponsored enterprises. This is what tyrants do.

Also this month, the House and Senate have worked mightily to keep every aspect of their attempts to iron out differences between their respective versions of statist health care hidden from the public, even though Barack Obama the candidate promised no fewer than eight times to have such meetings broadcast on C-SPAN. House Speaker Pelosi still absurdly tells the world that the process is “the most transparent in history.” If the Senate can’t hang on to its fragile 60-vote consensus, Democrats, with the apparent acquiescence of Majority Leader Reid, have said they will use the option of “reconciliation,” which requires only 51 votes, to circumvent the opposition’s ability to filibuster. These are the kinds of things legislators who support tyrants do.

Finally, there’s the ongoing corruption of the voting process. The most recent body blow to its integrity came last week, when the House Judiciary Committee voted 15-14 along strictly party lines to oppose “requir[ing] the Department of Justice to explain to Congress why it dismissed a voter intimidation case involving members of the New Black Panther Party at a polling place in Philadelphia in November 2008.” There is no dispute that such intimidation occurred. Those who were charged didn’t even bother to counter the government’s accusations; yet they will apparently suffer no consequences. The crystal-clear message being sent in advance of Tuesday’s vote is that those who engage in voter intimidation and other voting irregularities have nothing to fear. This is what a corrupt attorney general like Eric Holder and elected representatives all too eager to rig the process to cement a building tyranny do.

The January actions just cited make it seem as if Washington’s self-confident Democratic elites have decided to make the selection of the next U.S. senator from Massachusetts a referendum on what they have done to this country during their time in power.

Deliberately or not, they’ve gotten their way. Thanks to them, the choice couldn’t be more clear. There is no middle ground. A vote for Martha Coakley is nothing short of a vote for continuing and consolidating the developing tyranny. A vote for Scott Brown is a direct statement rejecting it. A Brown win, or even a narrow loss in this most liberal of states, repudiates it. A Brown win by a large margin ends any pretense that the country supports the actions and policies of Obama, his government, and Congress.