Maggie's Farm

This about sums it all up, for me. From a piece at View from 1776:

The Constitution created a government of limited power for a religious and moral people.  Political power was to be curbed by citizens’ God-given, inalienable, natural-law individual rights to life, liberty, and private property.  As the English Glorious Revolution of 1689 established, when a ruler arbitrarily contravenes those rights, he has broken the social compact and thereby forfeited his right to rule.

The paradigm of American liberal-progressive-socialists, in diametric contrast, is an authoritarian government that has both the right and the duty to determine how people should live their lives and even what thoughts are to be permitted expression in education and public forums.  In the government envisioned by liberals, the “public good,” as defined by liberals, always trumps individual rights.