It’s more than ironic that the LA wildfire crisis is a perfect illustration of what happens when the left goes feral—with out-of-control insanity very much like the wildfire that they brought on with their policy priorities.  The current crisis is not only their doing but is also a perfect metaphor for the fundamental difference between the authoritarian left and the pro-freedom right.  We’re seeing what happens with one-party rule—government and wildfires grow out of control—while they try to lay blame on somewhere else.

This situation should easily make the case why anyone impacted by the wildfires—and the government—no longer supports the authoritarian left, starting with the fundamental facts.

Government Is Like Fire, a Dangerous Servant and a Fearful Master

The fundamental purpose of government is to guarantee our inalienable rights, and perform civic administrative functions: building roads, patrolling the streets, securing the border… and managing emergency situations like the LA inferno.

We all should be equipped with a firearm or fire extinguisher to be the first line of defense and take care of matters at a local level, but it’s reasonable to expect the government to handle large-scale situations. We pay taxes—we should get something in return.

However, a problem arises when the folks elected to accomplish these tasks have different priorities.  Freedom-minded folks see firearms as the first line of defense against crime and chaos.  Not so for control-minded leftists—they see firearms as a threat to their power, not to mention the fact that disarmed people are more dependent on the government and therefore much more willing to endure tax increases for the false promise of safety.

The same holds for fire suppression; while you should have fire extinguishers on hand, the government has been delegated to handle these serious situations, but again, the problem arises when you have one-party rule and they have different priorities.  So instead of making sure there is plenty of water in the appropriate reservoirs when there is an extreme fire danger, implementing Prescribed Burns, or having sufficient equipment and resources, they focused on luxury beliefs and virtue signaling that get people killed:

And when their rank incompetence is exposed, they fall back on the old standby—the belief that they can never be wrong:

California’s ultra-left progressives have made it difficult (bordering on impossible) to do even the most responsible, common-sense things like build reservoirs (so firefighters and households won’t run out of water, as they did this week in L.A.), manage overgrown fire-prone forests (by controlled burns and by cutting back tinder-dry overgrown brush), and by ending the regulatory war against insurers in California (Newsom’s insane regulations on the insurance industry has sent fire coverage premiums soaring, if homeowners can get insurance at all).

But Bass, Newsom and the rest of the state’s political elites won’t admit they’re wrong, or even say they’re sorry for their repeated, deadly mistakes. The latest estimate is $57 billion in property damage, seven dead, 180,000 people evacuated, and thousands of structures destroyed. And all those numbers are sure to go higher.

Even worse for the left is the little bit of news that people don’t seem to be buying the climate change BS anymore:

This brings us back to the fundamental difference between the authoritarian left and the pro-freedom right.  When it comes down to basic philosophies of government, leftists are markedly different from the right in how they look at its fundamental purpose. 

Authoritarian leftists see government as a means to “transform” society into their version of a Utopia.  Even now, they’re talking about their ideas for “LA 2.0,” stating that “Los Angeles Shouldn’t Rebuild the Same Way Again”—whatever that means.  They don’t believe they should be tied down by constraints because “they know better”—just ask them.  They often evoke the imagery of fire in their ethos, in wanting to “burn it all down” and rebuild.  The past few days in LA have seen a horrifying image of what that entails.

Most on the pro-freedom right champion individual liberty and see government as a necessary evil and something that must be carefully limited.  It’s akin to fire in our eyes, a useful, but very dangerous servant that must be carefully controlled.  Kept as small and localized as much as possible for specific purposes.

We go by a basic set of principles that have been outlined many times, as exemplified in the speech by Mike Johnson after he was reelected to serve as speaker of the House:

We also recognize that the core principles that made America what we are, must still be preserved today. I call them the seven core principles of American conservatism but it’s really the seven core principles of America itself. Individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, human dignity. These are the ingredients, the things who made us what we are.

Of those seven core principles: Individual freedom, limited government, and the rule of law are completely at odds with the feral government approach of the left.  And that approach is seeing the destruction of what was once one of our greatest cities.

An unrestrained—leftist authoritarian—government is extremely destructive, and we are seeing that demonstrated right now.  The question becomes, why do liberals—not leftists—put up with this insanity and this destruction?  And when will enough of them wise up and throw to the left out?

D Parker is an engineer, inventor, wordsmith, and student of history, former director of communications for a civil rights organization, and a long-time contributor to conservative websites.  Find him on Substack.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.