No More Kings

David Harsanyi:

Some of you must still believe that politicians are meant to serve rather than be worshipped. And there must be someone out there who considers partisanship a healthy organic reflection of our differences rather than something to be surrendered in the name of so-called unity -- which is, after all, untenable, subjective and utterly counterproductive.

How about those who praised dissent for the past eight years?

...

Yes, two important historical events transpired Tuesday. The first was the peaceful transfer of power from one freely elected politician to another -- an uninterrupted streak we often take for granted. Then there was the first presidency of an African-American, which proves we can transcend our unsightly past.

After that, what we had was just another presidential election. We conduct one every four years. For those of you not shouting hosannas, it might have occurred to you that we are suffering from a rampant sickness in American life that casts government as the author of your dreams and an Illinois politician as the linchpin of your hopes.

Tom Brokaw -- whose hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, corralled thousands of innocent Asian-Americans into internment camps and assaulted the Constitution at every turn -- went as far as to compare Obama's inauguration to the Czech's fight for freedom over Communist oppression.

...

Liberals, rightly, recoil at the prospect of conservatives dictating which morals they should live by. Obama, though, has spent the past year preaching his own brand of morality -- with a list of demands. Everyone, you see, "must" sacrifice. As Michelle Obama recently explained, "Barack Obama will require you to work. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

Those of us who refuse to buy left-wing orthodoxy will remain "uninformed" and, inevitably, "selfish."

...

Obama challenges Americans to have "a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves." So if you find massive concentrated power in Washington a turn-on, you've found your higher purpose.

But surely, most of you found meaning in something greater than yourselves long before some politician demanded it.

To require such fealty to power in the name of patriotism was once repugnant to the left. Now, with the right guy in charge, apparently, it can be embraced once again.

Change, indeed.