GraniteGrok

• Freedom from self-responsibility (after all, Government will take care of you no matter what, according to Progressive policies)
• Freedom from bad consequences (after all, Government can rectify stupidity, according to Progressive policies)

There's only one small problem with that - in order to allow Freedom of Silliness to reign, the "collective" has to be forced to give up part of theirs (e.g., Progressive policies require that I give up my time, talent, and treasure so as to support

In short, anarchy at the personal level results to tyranny of Government over the rest of us - such an incentive to "good behavior"!  Problem is, what happens when even a sizable percentage of society decides 

Oh yeah, I think it was called Communism - a total FAIL.

And it is coming!  After all, The Progressive-in-Chief's mentor, Saul Alinsky, had this to say (H/T: The Heritage Foundation):

And then in his final chapter, Alinsky reveals what progressives really think of the average American: “Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized, and corrupt. They are right.”

Contempt for average Americans, and the desire to marginalize their common sense questions, is both at the core of the Progessive vision for governance and completely antithetical to the values of our Founding Fathers. Thomas G. West, author of The Progressive Revolution in Politics and Political Science, explains:

So, now we know what Dean really thinks of the American system for Governance?  After all, who can be more Progressive than Saul Alinsky?

The horns of a dilemma for Dean is that if he "throws Alinsky under the bus", he's gotta make room for Obama and the rest of his crew too!  Ready to do that, Dean?

Conn Carroll continues:

The Founders thought that laws should be made by a body of elected officials with roots in local communities. They should not be “experts,” but they should have “most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society” (Madison). The wisdom in question was the kind on display in The Federalist, which relentlessly dissected the political errors of the previous decade in terms accessible to any person of intelligence and common sense.

The Progressives wanted to sweep away what they regarded as this amateurism in politics. … Only those educated in the top universities, preferably in the social sciences, were thought to be capable of governing. Politics was regarded as too complex for common sense to cope with. … Only government agencies staffed by experts informed by the most advanced modern science could manage tasks previously handled within the private sphere.

So much for the traditional view of politics, stemming from the idea that the ordinary citizen would lay down their implements, go serve for a time in their Government, and then return.  The idea of a permanent political class was anathema to the Founders.  Sadly, that is what we have come to in today's society.  Worse, Progressive are trying, as fast as they can, to consolidate all power as far up the food chain as possible.

Remember, the further up the food chain the centralization goes, the less impact the ordinary citizen can have on how their "consent to be governed" on those doing the governing.

So yes, given the absolute amount of gerrymandering and the (pretty much) inability to dislodge incumbents, I am in favor of term limits (since few professional politicians refuse to voluntarily step down).

The Progressives did not intend to abolish democracy, to be sure. They wanted the people’s will to be more efficiently translated into government policy. But what democracy meant for the Progressives is that the people would take power out of the hands of locally elected officials and political parties and place it instead into the hands of the central government, which would in turn establish administrative agencies run by neutral experts, scientifically trained, to translate the people’s inchoate will into concrete policies.

In other words, people who are like minded compared to Dean have no problem in a more centralized government - after all, we all are too stupid to govern ourselves - the exact opposite of what our Founding Fathers knew to be right.

And why dissent, according to the Obama-ites, is not just to be stopped but to be crushed.  After all, THEY know the answers - whether you agree or not!

Conservatives believe the opposite view - we believe that the ordinary citizen knows the answers and is best sited to implement what is needed.  It is not the expert (although they can be right), the person who "has the experience" (although they can be right as well), nor the person from the Government (who often does NOT know the right answer - I give you Katrina (Dem & Repub) and the current man-made drought disaster in the Imperial Valley over a 2" fish (Dem).

But Progressives wish to take the Freedom of making one's own decisions away from the individual and in doing so, reduce their Liberty of action.

That, indeed Dean, makes Glen Beck correct:  Progressives are masters of "soft tyranny" and the progenitors thereof.  Congratulations, Dean!