The President and Adolf Hitler

A group of South Dakota legislators have proposed that every one in that fair state over the age of 21 own a gun. The most immediate response is to jeer, and dismiss the move as a typically conservative reaction in protection of the Second Amendment.

But that would be wrong. What they are doing is showing the downright stupidity of certain government mandates on a level which even the most stouthearted liberal could understand. South Dakota State Representative Hal Wicks explains it best: "Do I or the other co-sponsors believe that the state of South Dakota can require citizens to buy firearms? Of course not. But at the same time, we do not believe the federal government can order every citizen to buy health insurance."

The action illustrates the inanity, indeed the total threat to personal freedom, which is essentially behind the Affordable Care Act. If the government can order the individual to get health insurance, what else might the government order them to do? Eat right? Exercise? Because, of course, eating right and exercise would help curtail health care costs and would be good for you. And isn't it about what's good for you?

But therein lies the trouble: it quickly becomes not about what's right for you but what's right for the general society. Not that the individual should not have a proper general concern for society (for a stable society best makes it possible for him to enjoy proper freedoms) but that, ultimately, the person must, under reasonable circumstances, have the final say on his or her daily choices. Otherwise, we may as well become the Borg, and allow ourselves to simply be plugged in where everyone else thinks best. We may as well become the robots of the state.

That is what liberals, in the end, want. They want to tell us where to live and what type of transportation to use and what to eat and what to do with our lives. For to the left, it's all about the state. Your freedom ends where their desires begin. And they want it all.

That's why the Affordable Care Act is totalitarian, plain and simple. If the government can tell us to buy a certain something, a certain anything, it lays the groundwork for the government to control us all the way down. At the risk of feeding the vitriol which has so many folks distraught these days, that's why it's okay to portray President Obama as Hitler. The jewel of his Presidency is simply dictatorial.