Early this year in The American Thinker and in this column I discussed state marijuana legalization and federalism. I cautioned against advocates of freedom and federalism forming alliances with the “progressive” left on those issues in which the left claimed to favor free choice. I pointed out that that for that bunch”free choice” is nearly always a mere waystation to more coercion.

I wrote:

Today’s “progressive” movement is not controlled by the reasonable liberals of your granddaddy’s generation. Today’s “progressivism” is increasingly a totalitarian movement. In other words, a critical mass of its adherents genuinely believe that there are no limits to what they can make government do to the rest of us. As is true of other totalitarians, they see any victory won for freedom as merely opening the door for more coercion.

A new CBS story from Berkeley, CA demonstrates the point. Marijuana legalization was supposed to be about freedom. But the City of Berkeley, archetype of “progressivism,” has now decided to impose a marijuana mandate, forcing businesses to give away free pot.

The next step doubtlessly will be forcing the rest of us to subsidize pot, and finally forcing people to use it.

The hard fact is that these thugs see no limit to their use of government as a tool for pushing other people around.