Progressives' determination to control others' actions through laws enacted by the nanny state--just not to allow those laws to intrude upon their own lives--should be rather evident.
From Jim Geraghty in National Review Online:
In recent weeks, we examined the Obama administration’s willingness to reverse positions that it had once proudly proclaimed — on whether an individual mandate is necessary, whether the individual mandate is a tax, whether it is important that you can keep your plan or doctor, whether lobbyists should work in a president’s administration, whether a donor should be appointed U.S. ambassador, and so on. Then we noted environmentalists who said they would not criticize or attack lawmakers who supported the Keystone Pipeline, as long as they were Democrats.
Last week, we expanded the discussion to progressives’ wide-ranging willingness to contradict their own professed principles: gun-control proponents who travel with armed bodyguards, voucher opponents who send their kids to private schools, and minimum-wage-hike advocates who pay their staff less than the minimum wage, among others.
So what do progressives really want? If, as I suspect, the currency of progressivism isn’t policies or results, but emotions, what does that approach build? What kind of a country do you get when political leaders are driven by a desire to feel that they are more enlightened, noble, tolerant, wise, sensitive, conscious, and smart than most other people?
The evidence before us suggests progressives’ ideal society would be one where they enjoy great power to regulate the lives of others and impose restrictions and limitations they themselves would never accept in their own lives. Very few people object to an aristocracy with special rights and privileges as long as they’re in it. ...
In the progressive mindset, laws are primarily designed to regulate and manage the actions of other people. Last month in the Daily Beast, columnist Jamelle Bouie (who is now writing for Slate) argued that allegations of illegal secret donations to the election campaign of Washington, D.C., mayor Vincent Gray didn’t really matter because he deemed Gray a good enough mayor...
Finally, progressives would happily accept a society where the choices of the lower classes about what food to eat was limited for their own good, while the special caste could continue to eat whatever they want. Thus we see former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg attempt to ban Slurpees (570 calories) and large Diet Cokes (zero or negligible calories) — beverage choices of the working class — but the law’s exemption for milk-based beverages means it wouldn’t hit the venti java chip Frappuccino from Starbucks (580 calories), the milkshake-in-disguise selection that’s more popular among the usually progressive-minded Manhattan Yuppies. Bloomberg’s large soda ban was struck down as unconstitutional. [Italics in original]
Truth in advertising: As regarding the criticism in the article directed toward FEHB healthcare plans by many members of Congress--"if not quite a 'Cadillac” plan, then [it is] 'the best Buick on the block'"--I have a similar plan. But this cannot vitiate the fact that there is a great deal of hypocrisy--"Do as I say, not as I do"--attendant to many of these matters mentioned in the article.
Oh, here is the link: The Progressive Aristocracy | National Review Online
