LEFTIST COERCION

The leftist State could not exist without coercion. The Left's basic form of argumentation is to silence its opponents and critics. I've posted this film clip of Gamal Abdel Nasser addressing a political meeting before in order to illustrate the decline of modernity in Egypt, but it may be a more important and revealing illustration of how the Left seeks to use the coercive power of the State to enforce its cultural and economic principles.

Notice the reaction to the last anecdote. The head of the Muslim Brotherhood could not persuade or force his own daughter, a medical student, to veil herself with a head scarf, and he therefore appealed to the government to use the threat of official violence to do so. This illustrates the use of State power to enforce what can't be done by encouragement.

ADDENDUM: One Cosmos has a good discussion of leftist coercion, here.

The purpose of political talk is to inform, to inquire, to question, to explain, etc. But leftism needs none of these things. Rather, it needs only power, so all the talk is just so much babbling as a prelude to the real issue: I get to tell you what to do. We routinely tell three year-olds to use your words! Try that on an angry and entitled three year old in an adult body. With a loaded bazooka. Thus, the state didn't need to convince anyone that socialized medicine is a good idea. Rather, it just went ahead and enacted it. "You have to pass the bill to find out what's in it" -- which is just an extension of "you have to elect Obama to find out what's in him." Or "Please authorize my use of force, even though I need no such authorization. Rather, I just need someone else to blame for f*cking this up."