The so-called Livable Communities Act is top-down central planning scheme designed to change where we live and work, and how we travel. Bureaucrats in the Environmental Protection Agency, Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Transportation will oversee this Soviet-style social engineering.

It’s worrisome to witness the growing historical parallels between today’s Democratic Party and the totalitarian regimes of the last century. Of course, when confronted with the suggestion of fascism or communism, liberals recoil in vehement denial. Yet, their actions and policy preferences are in direct contradiction of their alleged allegiance to the traditional model of American government. They can deny their despotic tendencies all they like, but their actions speak of collectivism, not liberty.

The main goal of the Livable Communities Act would be to reduce personal travel and shift family housing from the suburbs to small crowded apartments in big cities. The results will be disastrous, as in other collectivized societies. There is no way you can create a harmonious or ’sustainable’ environment when people with varying lifestyles, manners, habits, and tastes are all forced to live in close proximity. But the left is foolish enough to advance this idea and immoral enough not to care about consequences.

The typical American life of a single-family home in the suburbs, complete with two automobiles, has long been scorned by our political and academic elite. They see this lifestyle as both wasteful and destructive to the environment (ignoring their own mansions, limos, and private jets), and thus desire to see people stuffed into cramped, eco-friendly government boxes. Land ownership will be restricted to the elite and the state, not unlike a return to serfdom.

The Senate version of the bill, written by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), claimed that centralized development would reduce traffic, create jobs, and make residential and commercial development more environmentally friendly. Notably lacking from the agenda is whether or not people would be happy living in crowded, centrally planned communities. But the pursuit of happiness is passé to the ruling class, whose utopian crusade overrides obsolete American ideals. There’s no reason to believe in the viability of Dodd’s green commune, and more importantly it isn’t in the job description of the federal government.

Someone should ask where Sen. Chris Dodd lives and the rest of the Washington elite. Do they live in small, cramped apartments or planned communities that offer no space or privacy for its residents? Of course not. The ruling class of hypocrites have mega-mansions on many acres of land, proving yet again they have no moral authority.

Taking away the freedom to decide where you will live and work and travel, are just a few more of the countless examples of how despotic progressives want to limit our choices in life. America used to be exceptional in our freedoms, but the left has been progressively destroying those liberties in their never-ending quest for government-mandated communalism.