“The Lives of Others”-Critique of a Critic

The lack of self-awareness on the Left seems at times at the very least childish, but more often fully pathological.
I recently had the pleasure of watching the winner of the best foreign-language film Oscar of 2006, “The Lives of Others”. It is a powerful, subtle, inspiring film. It shows the dark side of socialist East German life before the fall of the wall. Let me repeat, that is socialist East German life.
So I was somewhat surprised when I went back and read film critic turned Liberal propagandizer, Roger Ebert’s, review of the film. Oh, he enjoyed it well enough, but that is not my point. It was his comparison of the coercive, intrusive, totalitarian bent of the East German bureaucracy to the current Executive branch of American government that struck me as odd.
Here is his assessment:

But the movie is relevant today, as our government ignores habeas corpus, practices secret torture, and asks for the right to wiretap and eavesdrop on its citizens. Such tactics did not save East Germany; they destroyed it, by making it a country its most loyal citizens could no longer believe in.

First, I would like to remind Mr. Ebert that East Germany was a socialist/communist regime. A regime of the Left. A government built on the idea of comradery, of all for one, of fairness, and of equality. In short, a perfect Liberal utopia.
To compare the actions of such a regime to America today is simply ignorant. Americans have not lost there rights to habeas corpus, Mr Ebert. I would appreciate any proof you have otherwise. And what you would like to consider torture today, would have been seen as merely discomfort under the previous East German regime. Also, the only people who your hated Bush regime want to wiretap are those in contact with foreign terrorists. Let us, please, at least be honest.
Second, as long as we’re being honest, how can you but admit that attacks on the liberty of modern American citizens come almost always from the Left? Political correctness, college speech codes, the shouting down of Conservative speakers on college campuses, the threat of destruction of talk radio through the Fairness Doctrine, the silencing of debate with smears such as bigotry, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, chicken-hawk, and hater. All these attacks on free speech come from Left of center. Coercive smoking bans, seat belt and insurance laws, the latest attacks on fatty foods, the slow steady erosion of parental rights. These nanny state policies stem most always from the Left. The preference toward governmental larceny that is intrusive taxation is a Leftist ideal. As are threatened taxes on vehicle and home size, carbon usage, and certain types of foods. Our forefathers understood that taxation is most always an attack on personal liberty. Progressives seem to have forgotten this fact.
Third, and last, is the way in which the East German government aimed at controlling its populace. Where does the urge to control come from in today’s America? Possibly from those who believe they know how to run our lives better than we ourselves? Sounds like Leftist elitism to me. From those who fear our actions, if untempered, will lead to environmental destruction? That’s the greenie Left this time. From those who believe that fairness can be inflicted through progressive taxation? Yep, it’s the Left again.
The characters in “The Lives of Others” dealt with real governmental coersion and intrusiveness on a daily basis. Their liberties were undermined on a true and personal level, unlike Mr. Ebert’s paranoid conspiratorial fear of Bush. They lived under a regime that believed ‘the government governs best who governs the most’. Is that a value of the Right? Or rather the Left, Mr. Ebert? I think we both know the answer to that. But if you do not, then you are either lying to yourself or else you are impossibly ignorant.
I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who said, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,
it expects what never was and never will be.” Maybe sir, you should learn from that.