Tyranny in a To-Go Bag

It has taken me 30 years of reading and thinking about politics and political ideas to reach the conclusion that liberalism is just the first stage of tyranny.

The trigger for this revelation is the renewed effort to…once again…eliminate the scourge of paper bags that litter the roadways and fill the landfills (actually, that’s what landfills are for, but set that aside for now). 

As has been reported in California Globe and elsewhere, Sen. Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas) has introduced a bill that would completely ban the use of “non-film” plastic bags in California by 2026.  This despite (or maybe because of) the state’s existing law that sought to reduce plastic bag use by charging a fee for their use.

Time and again we have seen how a reasonable “liberal” idea has been pursued beyond all recognition to become a utopian leap forward demanding total and complete submission.

The ban on plastic bags (and straws and forks and cups and…) has its roots in the “ecology” movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, the goal of which was fairly sensible: clean air and water.  So too the march towards the elimination of the combustion engine.

In a similar vein, we have seen the efforts to decriminalize homosexuality transmogrify into the near-obligatory celebrations of the gay lifestyle each June.

This propensity towards extremism is nowhere more evident than in the case of tobacco.  Not only have liberals sought to make tobacco prohibitively expensive and socially unacceptable, but they have turned their sights to the eradication of even tobacco-less vaping products.

The tendency also extends to more abstract ideas such as bigotry, ignorance, want, and fear, the elimination of which is paramount to the liberal cause.  The forward advance of liberation can never succeed as long as one person on Earth suffers from the aforementioned in any way.

On their face, the initial idea behind these efforts is defensible, even admirable.  But there is something in the liberal temperament that pushes beyond all bounds of reasonableness.  The liberals have a funny way of taking a good idea and shoving it down your throat until you gag.

If you doubt this, just consider the comments of the bill’s cosponsor, Asm. Bauer-Kahan (D-San Ramon):

“Ten years ago, California attempted to ban plastic bags to stem pollution. Yet, these insidious relics persist, choking our waterways, imperiling wildlife, and despoiling our ecosystems. AB 2236 is our battle cry against plastic pollution. With tougher rules and a push for eco-friendly alternatives, we’re ready to kick plastic bags to the curb and reclaim our environment.”

This while mountains of trash from homeless encampments foul the state’s landscape.

Meanwhile, the liberals somehow never target the vices, indulgences, and panaceas that they prefer. Wine and marijuana production require immense amounts of energy, water, fertilizer, and exploitable labor, but there is no consideration of banning those activities. The social costs of hard drug use are more evident every day (in the form of overdoses and social disorder) yet liberals are seeking ways to expand their use and acceptance, through the promotion of innovations such as safe sites and micro-dosing psychedelics.  

And I don’t see any attempts to curb the luxurious, bucket-list tourism (especially of the “eco” variety) that—in terms of emissions, trash, and impacts on local ecosystems—is perhaps the most destructive activity on earth, all the more so for being superfluous. Meanwhile, the supposedly cost-free, low-impact nature of toxic electric car batteries and bird-killing wind turbines is increasingly in doubt.  

I should note, as the push to eradicate the plastic bag from human memory makes clear, liberal is an outdated term.  It once referred to people who believed in individual rights and choice, limited government, empiricism, free markets, religious tolerance, and a certain loosening of social mores.  In fact, the term was so broad even many conservatives took it up as so-called “classical liberals” i.e., of the type associated with John Locke, Adam Smith, and other 17^th and 18^th century (mostly English) philosophers.

I use liberal here only to make the point that today’s progressivism—with all of its militancy and vengefulness—is simply the natural outgrowth of the (initially) much more tolerant and civil liberality. 

As others have noted, liberalism started as the idea that everyone should think for themselves but has transformed into the idea that people can only think what the liberals do.

Thus, we see the unremitting intolerance that has become the defining characteristic of left politics, no more so than in California. Furthermore, for a movement that is supposedly opposed to irrationality and bellicosity, it is unsettling how liberal political aims take on the character of the most bloody and determined of crusades.  

Everything the liberals dislike must be eliminated.  Not reduced, not curbed, not ameliorated—struck from the face of the planet.  What happens when the thing the liberals want eliminated is you?  Conservatives, libertarians, and others in California unwilling to “get with the program” may soon find out.