US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is a school-marmish New England pseudo-liberal technocrat. US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is a Deep South pseudo-conservative militarist. They’ve staked out their respective stomping grounds in opposing wings of the American uni-party. So when they agree on something — anything at all — Katie bar the door. Trouble’s on the way, because while they might seem like political opposites, they share one overriding value in common: Both of them want to run your life.

The theoretical purpose of their “bipartisan” (another warning signal not to be ignored) Digital Consumer Protection Commission Act is to “protect consumers, promote competition, secure Americans’ privacy, guard national security, and prevent harm online.”

Its actual purpose is to put  a pack of bureaucrats in charge of the Internet so  you don’t get to see anything Warren and Graham think you shouldn’t see. Which, between the two of them, is probably pretty much everything (except perhaps press releases from the offices of Warren, Graham, and their fellow political cultists).

Aside from the risible “Consumer Protection” claim, naturally, they justify their prospective power grab on a “for the children” basis: It’s not that they’re megalomaniacs,  see, it’s that they’re against all the things everyone is against — “child sexual abuse material and sexual exploitation, human trafficking, drug trafficking, cyberbullying … eating disorders, addictive behaviors, and teen suicide.”

Presumably most of us agree that the Graham/Warren laundry list is chock full of Very Bad Things.

But it’s a giant leap of faith to expect a new government bureaucracy, armed with powers that clearly violate the First Amendment and other basic principles of anything resembling a free society, to accomplish much in the way of fighting Very Bad Things, real or imagined. The next time that happens will be the first time it happens. And there’s not going to be a first time.

By the time the federal government gave up on alcohol prohibition, more Americans were consuming more booze than when it started.  While the war on drugs may not yet be formally ended, it’s increasingly clear that the drugs have won. And if you’d like to see a mass shooting, just park your car in any area marked “gun-free zone” and wait a little while.

Graham and Warren are just the latest pair in a long, eternal line of busybodies who think they’re entitled to police what you read, view, listen to, smoke, drink, or otherwise ingest, and who demand that you trust them to do so.

I don’t know that these two are any less trustworthy than their predecessors, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that no one’s entitled to, or should be trusted to, make such decisions on your supposed behalf.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“Democrats and corporate media throw around terms like ‘fascism’ and ‘dictatorship,'” Brian C. Joondeph writes at American Thinker, “as a means of stifling discussion of anyone they disagree with. Totalitarianism is another term along those lines, typically associated with tyrants such as Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler.”

Unsurprisingly, Joondeph attributes the “real” totalitarian impulse to those same Democrats and corporate media, deploying another buzz phrase to paint former president Donald Trump as the hapless victim of an out-of-control regime: “The party in power has arrested and wants to imprison its political opposition, banana republic-style.”

I’m not here (today, anyway) to argue the validity of the charges Trump faces, but it’s worth noting that as a life-long member of the privileged political class he’s hardly a typical “banana republic justice” victim, and that he’s enjoyed both far more forbearance and far more due process accommodation than one might expect in a banana republic.

Rather, I’m amused by the notion that American totalitarianism is the exclusive province of “Democrats and corporate media.”

The best definition of totalitarianism I’ve found comes from a famous totalitarian, Benito Mussolini, who defined his version of totalitarianism (fascism) this way: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

Mussolini’s description encapsulates the inevitable conclusion of allowing the state to exist. The state is to totalitarianism as the acorn is to the oak — the embryonic form, if you will. If the former lives long enough, it will by its very nature mature into the latter.

While that process raises various ethical questions, it’s not really an ethical question itself. It’s just how organizations enjoying monopolies on the use of force work. As Anthony de Jasay pointed out, the state by its nature “seeks to maximize its discretionary power.”

The discretion involved naturally focuses on the priorities of those in control, whether it be winning the next election, or waging culture war from either side, or even pursuing some actual notional good.

Democrats want to ban “hate speech” and “Russian election interference.” Republicans want to ban “gender ideology” and “Chinese influence operations.” Either way, the  arc of the statist universe bends toward total control.

No amount of power is ever enough. Sooner or later, EVERYTHING becomes a priority. The more control the state has, the more it wants, the more it interprets dissent or even diversity of opinion as an existential threat to its prerogatives, and the more excuses it manufactures for cracking down on them.

Not all states become totalitarian. Some are overthrown first. But both the Democratic and Republican roads, if traveled to their ends, lead to Mussolini’s Rome. We can have freedom, or we can have the state. We can’t have both.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“Today,” Lt. Colonel Joe Plenzler (USMC, retired) writes at Military.com, “the military needs only about 160,000 youth from an eligible population of 30 million to meet its recruitment needs. But after two decades of war — both of which ended unsuccessfully — and low unemployment, many experts believe the all-volunteer force has reached a breaking point.”

Plenzler suggests a “limited” military draft to make up for recruitment quota shortfalls. “We should have our military recruiters sign up new troops for 11 months out of the year,” he writes, “and then have the Selective Service draft the delta between the military’s needs and the total number recruited.”

As a practical matter, Plenzler’s proposal “solves” an artificial problem that needn’t and shouldn’t exist. The US armed forces are far too large and far too expensive if their purpose is “national defense.” If they were cut by 90%, the risk of a significant foreign attack on the US would remain the same as now — virtually non-existent, and mostly a matter of air and missile defense. Stop trying to rule the world militarily. “Problem” solved.

As a legal matter, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution remains the Supreme Law of the Land: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” While the government and its courts have a long history of ignoring that unambiguous ban on conscription.

Which brings us to the most important consideration: Where Plenzler’s proposal falls on the moral axis.

The aforementioned 13th Amendment, while obviously applicable to military conscription, was proposed and ratified on the premise of outlawing chattel slavery.

Plenzler suggests returning to that evil and immoral practice: “We should hire cotton pickers 11 months out of the year,  then enslave as many additional people as needed to get the crop in.”

Three swings (practical, legal, and moral), three misses. If policy proposals are like baseball, Plenzler strikes out.

Unfortunately, policy proposals aren’t like baseball. The same awful ideas come back around periodically, and no matter how many times they strike out they never get cut from the team. Occasionally they get a base hit — and we get an extended military debacle like the war in Vietnam.

No matter how many turns at bat we allow it, a bad idea remains a bad idea. And Plenzler is preaching an irredeemably evil idea.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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