OPINION:
As most of the world points,laughs and gives the headshake to Greece over its socialist-driven economic meltdown, Americans don’t need to look east to see the scourge of liberal policies. Look west to the state of Oregon, and you’ll see our very own fascist chaos wrapped in concern-troll self-righteousness that would make every failed leftist politician blush.
The reason Europe is having such a hard time letting Greece go is because they’re loathe to admit the obvious — that socialist policies are crazy and destroy people’s lives. In Oregon, the legacy media would also rather look away, because it, too, highlights what you get when you let liberals do the thinking.
If there was any clear condemnation of the inherent inability of liberals and big government to function it’s Obamacare. It now appears the Obama regime’s big success story was being able to hide the fact that the Healthcare.gov website was never really functional, its problems weren’t a glitch, and the payment “back end” never materialized, as it would never work.
Oregon wasn’t as adept at bamboozling people. Plagued with incompetence and dysfunction, spending $300 million in taxpayer dollars wasn’t enough to even make it appear as though they had a working marketplace. Oregon finally pulled the plug on the marketplace in 2014 and defaulted to the federal exchange.
The liberal agenda isn’t just about having no clue and wasting your money. There’s nothing more exciting for a liberal than using slogans about “equality” and “free speech” and “love” in order to destroy someone’s business with whom they disagree.
Two years ago it became apparent that the fascist gay left weren’t really excited about gay marriage. No, they were excited that they had a new cudgel with which to go after Christians. Let me tell you, as a gay woman who supports gay marriage, the conversations I’ve heard from liberal gay leadership for the past decade involved not the civil rights victory for gays, it was about the “new weapon” it would provide against Christians.
Oregon gives us one of the first cases-in-point: Melissa Sweet Cakes, owned by Aaron and Melissa Klein. This small (now shuttered) family owned business has now been officially fined $135,000 by the state for declining to make a cake for a gay wedding. But that wasn’t enough for the fascists in Oregon.
The final order essentially issues a gag ruling on the Kleins. Mark Hemingway at the Weekly Standard notes, “[T]here is no way that these people can both continue as bakers and express their beliefs or explain how their beliefs affect their behavior without violating this order.”
A daily double for the liberals in Oregon. A boot on the neck of freedom of religion and freedom of speech. I would bet, when it’s late at night and the fire is raging in their cave, the apparatchiks at the Oregon Department of Labor spend endless hours shining up their knee-high jackboots and doodling new designs for spiffy black jackets.
When Oregon isn’t working hard to obliterate religious liberty in the name of “fairness,” they’re scrambling to find “volunteers” for their “Tax You Into Oblivion by the Mile” scheme. As The Washington Times reports, “Oregon is using an experimental program to become the first state to tax drivers based on the miles they travel on state roads rather than the gas they purchase.
The voluntary program, called OReGO is designed to capture taxes from hybrid and electric car drivers who have been able to skirt gas taxes.”
OReGO. Sounds like a laxative, no?
But this isn’t really about taxes. Two of the three OReGO systems track and store a car’s every move, according to The Washington Times. Bottom line, this is about putting a GPS system, controlled by the government, into everyone’s car.
If you think liberalism is just about stealing your money, hounding people of faith, and stalking you, think again. Your children are also in their sights. The latest from Oregon is one of the most grotesque examples of self-righteous fascist abuse you’ll hear:
Oregon is allowing 15-year-old children to get state-subsidized sex-change operations, without parental consent. This in a state where 15-year-olds can’t get a tattoo, use a tanning bed, drive, or drink. You see, the age of medical consent in Oregon is 15. Because for some reason liberals think a child can be trusted to know if they want a mutilating operation, but they’re not mature enough to decide to get a tattoo of a rose on their ankle.
Yes, it’s madness, and even child abuse. “Dr. Paul McHugh, who led the Johns Hopkins Psychiatry Department and still practices, said Oregon’s policy amounts to child abuse. ’We have a very radical and even mutilating treatment being offered to children without any evidence that the long-term outcome of this would be good,’ Dr. McHugh said,” as Fox News reported.
Regardless of what you think about the issue of transsexualism, a state allowing minor children, whom that same state doesn’t think are mature enough to make the most basic of personal choices, to engage in a life-altering, irreversible surgical procedure, without notifying parents or guardians, is dangerous and obscene.
As you can look to Greece for an example of the despair and destruction liberal economics get you, just look to Oregon for another example of what happens when liberals do as they please, and you’ll get financial incompetence, the hounding of people of faith, the end of privacy, the stalking of the individual, and even the physical destruction of children.
• Tammy Bruce is a radio talk show host.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.