When you see something captured this concisely, it’s worth passing along.  From a John Hinderaker post on PowerLine, about progressives’ selective desire for donor transparency:

Why are the Democrats carrying on this selective war against “dark money,” which is itself, ironically, funded almost entirely with dark money? Democrats want to be able to identify conservative donors so that the Obama administration can use federal agencies to take revenge on them; so they can try to get them fired (like Brendan Eich); and so union goons can lead busloads of demonstrators onto their lawns. When liberal ideas have to compete with conservative ideas, they consistently lose. So the Democrats want to intimidate conservative donors in order to have the political field to themselves. There is nothing noble about their selective enmity toward “dark money.”

Bingo.  There’s something of a consistent theme from progressives’ approach to constructing their beliefs to their method of constructing a movement.  They believe, for instance, that their views are simply, objectively correct.  To disagree is ideological; to agree is to acknowledge reality.  To rewrite a culture and legal system according to their progressive delusions is merely to bring out the inner truth of reality; to defend yourself, your organizations, or your society from their onslaught is to “impose” your beliefs on everybody else.

Just so, it’s just plain justice, to progressives, to have labor unions collect money from taxpayers and shuffle it to political allies.  It’s just plain advancement of society for the Obama administration to filter billions of dollars to progressive organizations as “contractors” at every level of government — federal, state, and local.  If the entire federal bureaucracy is little more than a Democrat support organization, with every indication that it has been breaking laws and destroying evidence in order to attack political opponents, then it’s just government protecting the people.  It’s simply charity when law firms donate millions in in-kind contributions to defend left-wing clients.

And it’s just natural that progressives can use control of the media and of education in political battles, while upstart conservatives are somehow cheating when they mount counter-initiatives.

I’m not suggesting that progressives should be forbidden from doing any of these things (except its laundering of government resources), but it is telling that they want to foreclose avenues to public debate that they do not dominate.