Reasserting Political Power

A recent Politico report starts off by claiming that liberal Democrats in the Senate will be pushing to tighten regulation of Wall Street as a way to “reassert their power.” If that doesn’t sum up the problem with politics, what does?

The following is the lede for the report:

Liberal Democrats see an opportunity to reassert their power in the Senate this spring on the Wall Street reform bill, after being forced to swallow a series of compromises on everything from health care reform to jobs legislation.

It’s not that they genuinely see stricter regulation as the right thing to do. No, they view it as a way to strut their political power.

 

The type of power that politicians have is the power to tell other people what to do. For better or for worse, that is the unfortunate result of politics: One group of people forcibly telling another group how to live their lives, without regard for any notion of rights or limited government.