The Democrats really are no less authoritarian than the Republicans.
They just get authoritarian in different ways and about different things.
The Republicans tend to be authoritarian about flashy (and fashy) things, that result in armored stormtroppers stomping around in the streets.
This makes their authoritarianism quite obvious. It hard to overlook the roving gangs of thugs.
The Democrats tend towards a quieter authoritarianism, implemented by the mechanisms of the regulatory State more than the police State.
But they are both certain that the State should control of your personal life.
California, being a solidly Democratic state these days, provides many examples.
Some obvious recent ones have been State regulations of how toys may be displayed in stores, what flavors of nicotine products adults are allowed to purchase and requiring the software on your personal computer to tell other computers how old you are.
And now, requiring that your 3d printer check with the State for approval before allowing you to print things.
None of these laws can be justified in a free State.
The State has no business telling a store how to organize its merchandise.
It was already illegal to sell nicotine products to children.
The State has no business requiring that the entire Internet know your age before allowing you to access it.
And now, it’s already (for the most part) illegal to make or sell homemade guns.
These examples fall into two broad categories:
- intrusion to force the citizens to live a lifestyle determined by the State (gender-neutral toy displays and suppression of nicotine use)
- intrusion to make it easier for the State to enforce other laws (age-restricting Internet content and restricting access to guns)
Neither of these categories of State intrusion on the private lives of the citizens should be allowed.
The first is obvious: the State should not be allowed to dictate purely personal choices.
It’s frankly none of the State’s business how a store chooses to display its merchandise, or what chemicals a citizen chooses to put in their own body.
If it’s no other citizen’s business (and it’s not) then there’s no way it can be the State’s business.
Sure, displays that present a physical danger to customers or chemicals that threaten other citizens should be (and already are) regulated, but absent some threat or danger to another person this sort of thing is frankly not something the State should be allowed to interfere with.
The second should be obvious: the State should not be allowed to forcibly recruit citizens to do the State’s job without a warrant.
Even if the underlying laws are legitimate, and in these cases I’d argue that age-restricting information and restricting access to most guns is not, it’s still the State’s job to enforce those laws.
It’s certainly not every citizens job.
And by mandating State code running in every citizen’s devices, that’s exactly what these laws do: they make every citizen an informant or enforcer for these laws.
And that should certainly not be allowed.
But both the Democrats and Republicans use the State this way when they’re in power.
They pursue different ends, and mandate different things. So, ya know, they’re not the same in what goals they’re after.
But they’re both authoritarians in how they use the State to pursue those goals.
And no free State should put up with either of them,
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